Event Horizon
by Eliot Rosewater
Summary: When members of the fleet are abducted, Galactica's crew must keep it together if they're going to survive. Begins in S2. T for sparingly used salty language.
1. Chapter 1

There were very few instances in Captain Lee Adama's life that could be defined as 'messy.' They have occurred, make no mistake, but they were few and far between. He preferred to think of those times as 'organized chaos,' but who's keeping score? But this, _this_ was a mess. Since Colonel Saul Tigh had assumed command of _Galactica_ after the Commander's attack, things had rapidly descended beyond 'organized chaos' to just a plain old messy, well, mess.

He had not made things any easier to sort out, Lee reflected as he piloted the Raptor away from _Galactica _and toward _Cloud 9_'s docking station. Certainly, when his father awoke to find him missing from the brig (where he'd been placed for committing mutiny in the first place) with the president of the colonies, who was technically also in a state of arrest, abandoning the fleet…The old man would be like to tear his son's face off if he was close enough.

Despite the lingering misgivings, Lee felt that his decision was still the right one when all was said and done. The colonel's declaration of martial law would serve only to further divide the fleet and stir up more cries of resistance. If Lee wanted to be fair he would recognize that the colonel never wanted to have command of a battlestar and was only doing what his inexperienced instincts told him. Tigh had little tactical savvy and worse public relations skills. Hopefully the old man would be awake before the whole ship was destroyed.

Lee mentally tried the shake all thoughts of Tigh's command and his own abandonment of his dying father out of his head. They had arrived in _Cloud 9'_s hangar and he would soon need to be acting as envoy between the president and Tom Zarek. He was already running through the things he would have to say to get the president to accept Zarek's aid. She had a history of being adamantly against the so-called terrorist in all aspects. Hopefully their lack of other resources would be enough to get her to bridge that gap for now. Any support was good enough for two fugitives on the run. If he was being honest with himself, Lee was ready to go along with just about anybody if it put more distance between him and the guaranteed wrath his father would awaken with.

As promised, Zarek awaited them on the hangar deck. He was surrounded by a few choice companions. Lee lent a hand to the frail priestess Elosha and the ill president as they exited the Raptor. Their accomplices approached, Zarek offering his hand.

"Good to see you, Madame President," he said with a smile Laura Roslin didn't trust. She was already wary of him.

"Captain Apollo," she addressed Lee by his call sign as ever. "What is Mr. Zarek doing here?"

Lee explained, "Once Tigh gets over his initial shock, he's going to send out troops to search for us. If we're going to make it, we have to keep on the move." He gestured to Zarek. "I figure Mr. Zarek here is the only one in the fleet with enough shady friends around who can possibly hide us."

"I love the way he puts that," Zarek said in attempt to keep things friendly.

The president kept a poker face as she turned to look back at the terrorist. "Well, Mr. Zarek, it would seem the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

"Call me Tom."

Lee jumped between the two. "You're shuttle's waiting, ma'am. We have to hurry."

The priestess and the president allowed the captain to usher them away. Zarek lingered for a moment before following them. Lee tried to ignore the discomfort he felt at having Zarek where he couldn't see him. It hung about them as they seated themselves on the shuttle Zarek had arranged to take them off _Cloud 9. _The president's mistrust must be influencing him, Lee reasoned. He had no reason to question the other man's loyalty. Aside from the coup he'd staged on the _Astral Queen_, of course. The shuttle took off from the hangar. The president was deep in conversation with the priestess about something Lee very much doubted held any meaning and Zarek was leering at him. The uneasiness settling in his stomach was making him reconsider the whole thing again. Perhaps the awkwardness of this group of people was worse than living in the brig.

Distraction came in the form of Zarek's voice.

"She doesn't trust me, Apollo."

"No."

"I wonder how you got her to come along then. I wouldn't believe she would accept my help if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."

"She had no other options. I think she's just trying to live to fight another day." Zarek just looked at him, waiting for more. "And I may not have told her every detail of the plan…just that she may not like all of them."

"Ah, there it is. You know, they say a false word never fell from Apollo's lips. Toeing the line, aren't you, Captain?"

Lee's jaw clenched unconsciously. He'd never been fond of his call sign. Sometimes Hot Dog didn't sound so bad by comparison when people got to drawing connections between him and his father "Zeus". He let his head roll back against the wall of the shuttle and closed his eyes. Zarek made a satisfied noise and leaned away.

_One Week Later_

Saul Tigh was beyond relieved to have his friend back in command. Between the media, the knuckle draggers, and his wife, he was at his wit's end. Bill was making a startlingly quick recovery and taking back more of his duties. Saul felt a pang of guilt about that, as it was his fault everything had gone to shit after his friend's attack. Nevertheless, the guilt wasn't enough to cover his relief. The first day back in full command in CIC felt like old times.

Bill didn't waste a second getting down to business and calling for Mr. Gaeta's report on the fugitives. Saul wondered if this was more about seeing his son than it was about recovering prisoners. Saul himself wasn't sure how he felt about the whole thing. On one hand, he would have been more than happy to shoot the Raptor out of the sky and have the prisoners dead and done with. However, his loyalty to the old man had outweighed his instinct. He couldn't shoot the old man's son out of the sky any more than he could kill the old man himself. Not because he was so fond of the captain, but because he couldn't hurt Bill that way. Despite the differences father and son always seemed to find, Saul knew how devastated Bill would be if he knew his son was dead. And Saul wasn't going to be the one to heft that devastation onto the commander. Not after the mess he'd already made for him.

Felix Gaeta explained how the Raptor had docked at _Cloud 9_ and then been lost due to the heavy traffic to and from the luxury liner.

"By now they could be holed up anywhere in the fleet," Saul responded to the news.

"I want them found." Bill looked at Gaeta. "She was dangerous enough as a symbol of resistance, but now with Lee helping…" He was quiet for a moment. An awkward heaviness settled around the three men. "I want to search every ship in the fleet. Quarantine procedures. Isolate the ship out of the main body. If it's clean, keep it quarantined away from the rest of the fleet. She can hide, but she can't run."

Tigh acknowledged the order. "Dee, start quarantine procedures. Start with _Cloud 9._" He hoped he could mop up this mess for his friend. It was the least he could do.

The commander went to examine his other duties and to examine the state of the ship. No lies, the colonel had all but shit his pants when put in command. Bill certainly wouldn't deny it. There were other things on Bill's mind right now besides maintenance and how in the worlds he was going to sort out the declaration of martial law without embarrassing Saul too much while still affirming the Quorum of Twelve that he respected their governmental authority (to an extent).

Bill stood at the command table and looked at the star charts and various jump calculations spread before him. He put his hands on the edge and leaned forward, still trying to figure out the feeling he had of being closer to the ground. The sturdiness of the table beneath his hands was reassuring. His wounds would twinge now and then, but Bill liked the reminder. After all, he couldn't ignore the problem that was Sharon Valerii for very long.

* * *

A note on the timeline:  
This story relies on canon, but only in that it's all background noise. It is fan-fiction so I can do whatever I please, but know that in the future a lot of the events we all watched and loved/hated will be happening in the background (with some obvious exceptions). I have stretched the time out so that it will appear to be happening more slowly. I also apologize to all OCD people out there because I do alternate between Cylon Base_stars_ and Base_ships_. I am too lazy to go back and correct these.

I enjoy having my grammar corrected, so please have at it.  
As you know, the _Battlestar Galactica _universe is not my property, I'm just living in it.

Enjoy the exposition (which I realize is almost verbatim from _Resistance _and _The Farm. _Never fear, I will deviate shortly)_. _  
Cheers,

E.R.


	2. Chapter 2

Lee lingered behind Roslin and the others at the helm, still plagued with doubts over the whole plan and his decision to mutiny. He bit the side of his thumb and watched the exchange between Zarek and the president.

"We're ready."

Roslin had never looked surer of anything since her time in office had begun. "Send the signal and jump."

So it was.

A sudden longing to escape the ship gripped Lee the second after the beacon was launched. Thoughts raced through his mind: _I don't believe a word she says, it's religious nonsense, my father is well again and I should be beside him, none of the men on _Astral Queen _can be trusted._ But then the jump was complete and Lee chalked all his misgivings up to the effects of FTL travel. He only wished he believed it.

There was no time to dwell on it. No sooner had they emerged from the jump that DRADIS began to ping with unfriendly contact. He shoved his away over to the nearest monitor and felt fear grip his throat the way it never had before. The screen was filled with four big blips the size of Cylon Basestars and countless other Raiders. Lee would have said that there must have been a lot of debris in the area, making the DRADIS unreliable if he didn't know any better. He had, after all, traveled through this same sky on a SAR mission and their screens didn't look remotely like this.

A fleeting hope that they may be lost in the crowd and have just enough time to jump away before the Cylons noticed phased Lee before the thought was dashed with a tremendous smack to the port side of the ship. It rolled for a moment as the thrusters tried to correct themselves. Alarms and klaxons rang their fussy notices of damage and threats. The _Astral Queen_ caromed off its axis once more and all its occupants were tossed on the floor rather violently. Lee was trying to collect his wits and make sure the president wasn't injured when the lights suddenly fell dark and all instruments were abruptly cut off. An ominous _doovh!_ marked the blast doors falling shut tightly, locking them all inside.

_Thank the gods for that_, Lee thought. That must be the only good part of being on a prisoner transport ship. Their blast doors were made to close to protect the guards from riots and internal attacks. Any loss of power and the doors hunkered down for good, or until they were manually overridden.

"Madame President!" Lee tried calling over the noise of several men panicking all at once. He scrambled over the bodies around him, frantically searching. "Madame President! Laura!"

A hand reached out and gripped his forearm. "I'm here Captain Apollo."

Lee let himself breathe. He had been prepared to knock the lights out of anyone on this ship who grabbed him like that in the dark. "Are you hurt, Madame President?" Lee felt slightly guilty for using her first name and losing his head for a second.

"It seems we all lost our composure, but I'm just fine…Apart from the obvious." She was referencing her cancer Lee knew.

Bangs and screams echoed through the quiet corridors. The people in the helm couldn't decide if it was just their imagination or was the ship actually getting colder by the second? Was life support also failing them? The artificial gravity was damaged, that was for sure. The ship was beginning to roll on a horizontal axis. If it kept this up, they'd be spinning like a wheel, and with no gravity to keep them on the ground they'd be rolling from floor to bulkhead to ceiling with it.

There were the familiar sounds of a ship docking and a seal being made. They were being boarded. The people on the bridge were waiting with bated breath, even the least savvy of them understanding the situation without needing any hints. Lee could practically hear the sucking vacuum of space just beyond the bulkhead. Metal being wrenched from its home echoed down the ship. Screams, terrified, tortured screams. A discharge of fire put an end to all of that. Some people around Lee began to cry with the realization. Footsteps halted outside the blast doors. Bangs and weapons fire all bounced off without leaving a dent.

Lee looked at the president still holding his arm. _Perhaps she's not as crazy as she sounds_. He quickly wiped his head of the thought. He was panicking and making coincidences into something bigger than they actually were.

Though the blast doors to the helm were closed, the banging on the other side was no less deafening. It carried on like that for a while. Metallic feet banging down the corridors were followed intermittently by terrified screams, all while the blast doors were worked on. At one time there was a massive explosion outside, but the doors remained steady. Lee was beginning to feel motion sick from the rocking of the ship. The thrusters had stopped any full revolutions, but could not balance each other out. The people inside were sliding from one side of the helm to the other. Some had already vomited. Lee felt bad for the president, who was looking very ill and on the verge of tossing her guts as well. Elosha was whispering prayers that some of the more devout prisoners were following along with.

A light at one of the computer monitors caught his gaze as Lee shifted to accommodate for the changing tilt of the ship. No one was at the station and it appeared to be running on its own accord. Dread crept from his toes up the back of his neck. He hadn't noticed the lack of banging coming from the other side of the blast doors. The Cylons must have changed their tactics.

Unfortunately, Lee Adama had realized this too late. Gas had already breached the bridge and was dropping people unconscious by the second. Ripping cloth off the knocked out prisoner beside him and dumping the contents of the first bottle the rolled toward him onto it, Lee pressed the poor excuse of a filter to the president's nose and mouth. Laura Roslin had enough time to look at him in alarm and quickly figure out what he was doing before the captain slumped to the floor, dead for all she knew.

Laura groped for Elosha, only to find her out as well. Ripping one of the pages from her book, Laura quickly scribbled a note about their situation. Hands shaking with fatigue from the lack of oxygen, she shoved the note into a crease in the command station nearest her, taking care to make sure it wasn't obvious to find by the Cylons. Deciding that wasn't enough, Laura Roslin gathered her strength and crawled over the prone captain toward the wireless. Once there, she gripped the edge of the table as the ship rocked off kilter again. Having no idea how communications worked, Laura managed to turn on the wireless transceiver and send out a long, high-pitched note before passing out below the comm deck.

* * *

It had been too long in Bill's opinion: Too long since they'd heard anything from the former president, too long since he'd seen his son, too long since he'd seen Kara, too long since he last had a true break. Nothing seemed to be rolling their way. _But we haven't had Cylon contact for days, maybe even weeks_, he reconsidered. The crew was getting restless.

The last contact they'd had with Cylons was shortly after a few of his crew had gone missing. The Vipers had destroyed several of the Raiders and scared the rest off. The group they ran into was clearly running a recon mission. The most distressing of all the recent activity was the disappearance of Saul and his wife, Ellen. If he wasn't already swimming in a sea full of crap, he was now bleeding out from severe loss of officers. First Kara, then his son, then Sharon, Saul, his pilots Hot Dog and Kat, even the president and her assistant…they all seemed to be disappearing. He had come to the conclusion that they were being abducted by Cylons. There was no other reason for this.

Bill had always tried to distance himself from his crew. Loss was something he knew he risked every time he sent them to a task. But this was getting to be too much. It was with Sharon Valerii that he truly realized how much he did value and love his crew. Sharon wasn't just a machine, not to him, no matter what the facts said. She was the young pilot he'd met when she was just a kid. She still was a kid. _Was._ She was dead now; her body lay as proof in Doc Cottle's morgue.

Bill had to take his glasses off to rub his eyes. Emotion was threatening to overtake him. Dee's conversation echoed in his head about reuniting friends and family. The fleet needed to be put back together. He agreed wholeheartedly, especially now with the strange, green faces of the new crew in his CIC. His fleet being separated and his XO missing, along with his pilots and CAG, had gone on long enough.

The helm was preparing the jump to Kobol, the last known whereabouts of half of the missing crew (The president's assistant, Saul and Ellen, and the pilots Hot Dog and Kat having not been found anywhere in the fleet after quarantine procedures, Bill had come to deduce that they must be with the other part of the fleet at Kobol.) when Mr. Gaeta alerted the commander of DRADIS contact.

"Small hit on DRADIS, sir," he announced. "Just jumped in. They have colonial codes. It looks like a shuttle from one of the freighters that jumped away with the other part of the fleet."

"Sir, the shuttle is trying to make contact," Dee said.

"Put it through." He picked up the receiver at the command table. "This is _Galactica _actual. Go shuttle."

"_Galactica_, it's good to hear your voice. This is Starbuck. Request landing."

Bill didn't want to let himself believe it. There was no way. Nothing was rolling their way. He could hardly breathe.

"_Galactica?_" she called. "Request instruction."

There was no denying that voice was hers. Perhaps they'd finally gotten a break. At this point, Bill would jump on just about any opportunity that presented itself.

"Permission granted. I'll meet you on the hangar deck. I'd like to talk."

"Wilco, _Galactica._ I sure do have a story for you. Starbuck out."

"Mr. Gaeta," Bill turned to the man, calm as ever. "You have the con."

"I have the con, sir," he acknowledged.

In no time at all, the shuttle had docked, Kara Thrace had greeted all her old friends and the knuckle draggers, and came eye to eye with the old man. She'd heard about his attack and was relieved as could be to see him with no apparent lasting injury. Kara managed to hold back her impulsive hug until they were privately tucked away in his quarters. She noticed the commander did nothing to hold her back and seemed just as happy to have her back and she was to be back.

He handed her a drink and sat behind his desk, a smile on his usually solemn face.

"As glad as I am to be back on _Galactica_, Commander, I come with some bad news. I...I don't know where to start, actually." The happy reunion was fading from memory quickly as the responsibilities of her mission came back to the forefront of her mind.

Bill's face had gone back to its stern features. "Why don't you start at the beginning, Lieutenant?" He didn't think he wanted to know what she knew, but it would be important and he needed to ask.

Kara Thrace began to explain about returning to Caprica and finding the Arrow of Apollo. She gave details about the Cylon presence and also of the resistance. She found Helo on the surface and fought with him until they met up with the resistance. Kara talked about being shot and held in a Cylon hospital. Her account of her time there was vague and spotty. Bill got the distinct feeling that she wasn't telling all of the details of this particular part of the story. But he didn't want to interrupt, so he let her keep going. She said she managed to escape the hospital and was rescued by the resistance. Kara grew quiet when she talked of the men she left behind, out of guilt, the commander was sure. That would explain why she pushed the idea of sending rescue parties back there so hard.

When she was silent for a time Bill asked, "And how did you get off-planet?"

"Sharon," Kara whispered too quietly. She cleared her throat and looked the old man in the eye and said, "Sharon Valerii helped us."

Stunned silence followed. There were more Sharons. Bill felt dizzy. He had loved the pilot he found those short years ago. And then she'd shot him. Then she died, and he missed the girl she used to be and felt betrayed by her change. But she hadn't changed, not really. She'd been a Cylon the whole time. Just when Bill thought he'd come to terms with that and her death, he learned that there was another one so close at hand, in touch with his crew again.

"Where is she?" he asked. Her absence spoke volumes.

"She and Helo are with the rest of the fleet at Kobol. Sir, she…Sharon and Helo…she's pregnant with his child."

That hung in the air.

"What?"

Kara shook her head and drank. "Yeah, I don't know. I guess the Cylons are trying to reproduce or whatever. I don't know. You can interrogate her later. If you join up with the rest of the fleet, I mean. They're a real mess over there. That's actually the main reason I came here. I didn't know what else to do."

Bill was having a hard time getting over the pregnant Cylon news, but he kept on with Kara's train of thought. He wanted to hear everything she had to say about the other part of the fleet. He said, "So Roslin's having a hard time keeping all her followers in line? Scripture isn't enough to hold them over?"

Kara didn't say anything but ran her finger over the edge of the commander's glass. "That's not it at all, sir. Actually, the captains of those ships said that the _Astral Queen _had been attacked by Cylons and that the president and several aboard are missing. We did a search of the ship and it was ravaged and all empty except for one guy who was hiding in a storage locker. They also found a note in the helm."

Kara dropped a crumpled piece of paper onto the commander's desk. Bill carefully unfolded the paper. Written in shaky hand, it said _Attacked by Cylons out of jump. Boarded. People pass out, gas. _Bill's mind immediately jumped to Lee. His son would surely have been with the president.

"Did the man you rescued say anything?"

Kara nodded. "Said they were attacked right out the jump, like the Cylons knew they were coming. The _Astral Queen_ was infiltrated and most people were killed. He said it looked like they were looking for someone. There was a skin job with them. They couldn't open the blast doors to the bridge so they gassed the people inside and then used a virus to short circuit the doors and open them. He said the people didn't look dead. He thinks they kept them as prisoners. The president was one of the prisoners." She finished her ambrosia and looked to Bill with deep, sorrowful eyes. "So was Lee."

Bill's head was swimming. It was overwhelming. He didn't know whether to be relieved that his son was still alive or sickened by the fact that he was in Cylon custody having lords-know-what done to him. That turmoil dumped on his feelings about Sharon Valerii come again was giving him a headache. Bill wanted nothing more than to lie down and fall asleep. Perhaps when he woke up it would be made clear that this was all a nightmare.

The commander only allowed himself a few seconds to feel all of this inner turmoil before he made himself focus again. He was Commander William Adama now, no longer the emotional father Bill. He had a lieutenant sitting before him and he was going to act like it.

"Thank you, Starbuck. And if I may ask one more question, who was the man you rescued on the _Astral Queen_?"

Kara sat forward and placed her empty glass on Bill's desk.

"It was Tom Zarek."

The commander was back in CIC shortly, Kara following after him since she didn't know quite what to do. He addressed his helmsmen.

"We're heading to Kobol. Lieutenant Thrace has informed me of the status of the rest of the fleet. They need our help. Our own people have been taken by Cylons as prisoners. We will not stand for this. We must stay together as a race. If we want to survive we'll have to do it as one. We will not abandon each other just because of differences of opinion. You all know who's missing. We are going to find them and bring our friends, our brothers, our sisters, our _family_ home. _Alive._

"Mr. Gaeta, start the jump clock."

"Jump clock started, sir."

Commander Adama turned back to Kara. "Shouldn't you be with your pilots? We'll need a group ready when we jump into orbit around Kobol. Might still be leftover Raiders in the air. We'll need someone to keep us safe."

"Sir?" Kara looked uncertain.

"A ship needs a CAG, lieutenant. And you're _Galactica_'s." Bill put the box with her promotion inside on the command table in front of her. "I'm really going to need you, Captain."

Kara wouldn't touch the box. Words stuck to her tongue and she gaped at the old man before her. The last thing she expected when she came back from mutiny to _Galactica _with news of the possible death of the commander's son was a promotion. Least of all a promotion to the position vacated the missing son in question.

"Do you accept, Captain?" he asked, this time as Bill and not Commander Adama.

She chose her words carefully. "A ship needs a CAG. _Galactica _has a CAG. It's only temporary, but I'll be hers. Just until…until we bring _Galactica_'s back to her."

It was the old man she'd come to love that was looking at her then. He grasped her hand and gave her a pleading look that seemed to say _don't make me regret this. You can't ever leave again. Not now._

And she wouldn't. Kara wouldn't leave the man who had virtually become her father. Nor would she abandon Lee, not when there was reason to believe that he still drew breath. She didn't quite know what she thought of Lee, somewhere between brother and greatest friend she ever had. Label or no, she would bring him back to the old man. She couldn't leave him in Cylon hands, knowing what she did about what they did to the humans they captured. It was easy to convince herself that this mission came first. Samuel Anders would be rescued. But there was no argument to the rule _Family comes first_. If the Adamas weren't her family, she didn't know who was.

Looking right at Commander Adama, she said, "You can count on me, sir."

"I know." Kara Thrace was the closest thing to a constant he had. Somehow, Bill knew she would never back off once she gave her word. Even after she'd left on Roslin's insane religious mission, he could trust her again. There wasn't a doubt in his mind.

"Fleet has all jump away," Mr. Gaeta announced. "Jumping in five, four, three, two, one..."


	3. Chapter 3

Lee became aware of three things in very slow succession. First, that he was alive. Second, that he was no long aboard _Astral Queen_, and third, that there was a pain in his gut that twisted like a knife when he tried to move.

"Captain, try to go slow."

Collecting his wits, Lee recognized that it was Hot Dog that was talking to him. The two of them were in a small, stark room together with a single buzzing light suspended from the tall ceiling. There was nothing else in there with them. The door had no window. Lee looked around and then back to Hot Dog.

"Is this _Galactica_?" He began to pull himself into a sitting position. He leaned against the wall for support.

"No, sir. At least, this isn't any part of _Galactica _I've seen." Hot Dog sat next to him against the wall.

Lee pulled up his tanks to look at his stomach. A surgical incision smiled wetly up at him from his right oblique across to a little past the center of his abs. The sutures were poor and tugged at the flesh with every movement. "The frak is this?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. I woke up with one, too. Not as big as yours, though."

Lee pinched the bridge of his nose and covered the incision with his tanks again. "Okay, then how did you get here? Last thing I remember, I was with the president…" He wondered where she was (he wondered where _he_ was). Did she also have the souvenir of a mystery surgery? Lee felt like he'd fail her, failed to protect her just thinking about it.

"I was running CAP with Kat. We had some Cylon contact out ahead and I don't remember much after that." Hot Dog put a hand on the back of his head. "I know the commander was telling us that the XO was missing and to come back so we could jump away. We were intercepted by a heavy Raider and the rest is gone."

"The XO is missing? Tigh's gone?"

"That's what we heard. No one could reach him. That's all I know."

Lee tried to build a timeline but just couldn't get a grip on how much time had passed. There were too many holes and he didn't have enough information to fill them. Hell, he didn't even know if he was on a ship or planet surface. He asked Hot Dog, "How long have you been here?"

"It's hard to say. I can't really keep track of time too well. I know I was here alone for a few hours at least. Then I passed out and found you in here with me, sir."

"You don't need to call me 'sir.' We'll have little use for military protocol here. You said you passed out before I showed up? You've never really seen who's keeping you here? Wherever here is…"

"No. I think they've been gassing me. My mind's all foggy. I don't know how long it's been since Kat and I were lost. I don't even know where Kat is. I just woke up here with a bloody stomach. If they want to keep us disoriented, it's working."

He had that much right. It was all making him dizzy to think about. It certainly _felt_ like a lot of time had passed. Judging by the looks of Hot Dog, he hadn't eaten or drank in two days, at least. Neither of them would last another two if they didn't have water soon. Lee turned to his companion but stopped.

"Hot Dog, you're bleeding a bit."

The other looked at the spots leaking through his tank.

"Frak me."

"Here, I've got you." Lee eased his jacket off painfully slow and pressed it into the bleeding wound. He held pressure until his arms trembled with the effort. The other had fallen asleep or fainted, Lee couldn't tell. But when he took the jacket off, Hot Dog didn't seem to be bleeding anymore. Flakes of dried blood marked his hands. Lee's tanks began to feel wet. Suddenly too tired to care, he just laid down on his side and pulled his knees up to his chest, hoping that would be enough to stem the flow.

_It doesn't matter that I'm dehydrated since I'll bleed out first, _he thought as sleep covered him.

It was several hours later when Lee woke up in what he thought was sickbay on the Battlestar. He quickly realized it wasn't so. It was too quiet to be the real thing. You couldn't take two steps in there without hearing Doc Cottle's voice berating some poor patient or another. This was simply a stage. His head rolled to the side so he could see Hot Dog asleep in a bed beside him and a group of people gathered together at the far end of the room. Lee thought he recognized Saul Tigh's bald head.

He sat up in bed and caught his breath between his teeth when he shifted his feet toward the ground. The group stirred, taking notice of him.

"Colonel?" Lee called. Black and blue spots danced across his vision and he felt sweaty and chilled all at once.

"Captain Apollo," it was the president's voice. He hadn't heard the group approach. "Are you alright?"

Lee braced himself on the edge of the bed and blinked his eyes into focus. Before him stood the president, Colonel Tigh, Kat, and a young man he recognized as the president's aid. Lee nodded at Hot Dog. "Is he okay?"

Kat answered, "We don't know. They brought both of you in here with us and told us not to touch either of you until you woke up. You were first."

"You've seen them, then?"

"Cylons. A few Centurions and a load of skin jobs." That was the colonel. "Are you sure you're okay, Apollo?"

The colonel's words sounded awkward to Lee. It was a mixture of sincerity and embarrassment. The two men had never particularly gotten along together. The younger just nodded and wrapped his free arm around his middle.

"It's just the incision. Aches a little."

That just hung in the air for a heavy second.

"The incision, Captain?" Roslin asked. "What are you talking about?"

Lee looked up at them. Each looked as confused as the other. "When Hot Dog and I woke up, we each had a cut. Don't…didn't it happen to you?"

Tigh was looking at the captain with growing alarm. Kat walked right up to Lee and moved his arm and pulled his shirt up to reveal the oozing mark.

"Gods, what is that?" Tigh asked, but what he really thought was _Gods, I need a drink._ He felt as if he was looking upon the most wretched sight in the universe. His eyes just didn't seem to want to leave it.

"He's got one, too?" Kat asked.

"Yes." Lee pulled his tanks back down. The colonel looked at him with that horrified face again. Despite his lack of confidence in Tigh's ability to lead, Lee felt better know there was a higher ranking officer around. Tigh would, by default, be the leader. A chill ran through him. "So what's the plan?"

"Plan?" Tigh asked.

"How are we getting out? Contact _Galactica_. What are we doing?"

Kat was the one that answered. "We can't stay here, obviously. But we don't know enough to do anything yet."

"What _do_ we know?" Lee gritted his teeth as a feeling passed.

"We know were on a Basestar somewhere. Got here just a little while ago. We need to get out of this room and do recon. But that doesn't help us much now."

The president's aid spoke up beyond the group. "I think he's waking up!"

Hot Dog was indeed stirring. The group moved to look at the man in the other bed. Kat joined Billy in helping Hot Dog. The president was still looking at Lee with an odd look in her eyes.

"Are you okay, Madame President?" he decided to ask her.

She almost laughed, but placed a hand over her mouth. "Yes, Captain Apollo, I'm doing just fine. There isn't anything we could do if I wasn't, is there?"

"I suppose not."

The president and the colonel watched the young captain shift uncomfortably on the bed, one arm firmly back in place around his slit navel. The incision worried both of them. Wild possibilities chased each other in both their heads. From the looks of it, the other pilot, Hot Dog, couldn't even sit up from the pain.

Saul Tigh thought both of the pilots looked decidedly worse for wear. Their lips were cracked from dehydration and each of their faces was becoming drawn and gaunt already. Saul worried for a moment. It looked like they were going to have to buckle down for a while before they could make a move to try to escape or call for help. They had almost zero information on where they were or where the Cylons were taking them. If the two pilots looked this bad already, Saul didn't see how they could gather enough information and make a plan and execute said plan before one of these two completely succumbed.

The door at the far end of the room slid open and the Cylon known as Leoben stood at its opening with two copies of another skin job and two Centurion guards. Their weapons were armed and trained at the human.

"Colonel, if you would be so kind," the Cylon said, one arm extended toward him.

"I'm not going anywhere with you frakkin' machines. Forget about it." Saul took a defensive stance.

"We don't have to do this, Colonel. I'd prefer it if you came on your own authority. We just want to talk to you."

"You're out of your mind. You think any of us would willingly go with you?" Hot Dog spat from his bed. Kat gave him a silencing look.

The Cylon shrugged. "I didn't want to have to do this." To the other Cylons he said, "Bring her out."

The other two shifted around and brought into view a restrained and clearly abused Ellen. She shrieked when she saw Saul. Tears began to openly fall.

"Ellen," he called, almost automatically. "What are they doing to you? What have you done to my wife?"

"Give them what they want, Saul," she cried. "Make them stop…"

"We'll leave your wife alone, Colonel. Just come with us."

Lee tried to get on his feet then, to warn Tigh of a possible trap. The noise of Ellen's cries and Leoben promising to let her go was getting extraordinarily loud. He put a hand on the XO's shoulder, making the other man turn.

"Sir, this could be a trap-"

Saul cut him off. "She's my wife, gods damn it! I'll go-"

"Colonel, that's really not a good idea," Lee tried in vain to tell him. Tigh could be even more irrational than usual where Ellen was involved.

"I don't care what you think!" Tigh shouldered him off and stepped toward the Cylons, arms raised. "I'll go with you, just leave my wife alone."

The two skin jobs shoved Ellen into the room and went toward the colonel. One of the Centurions kept its weapon aimed on Ellen, the other kept watch over the rest of them. The two copies bound Tigh's hands together and joined that bond to a collar around his neck so his arms could not be fully extended. They led him out of the room, the Centurions following after the others. The door fell closed again, a lock banging into place.

* * *

Kara Thrace had realized that she never really appreciated any of the CAGs before her. Where she thought being an officer and Viper pilot was hard work, she never gave a full thought to how demanding being CAG was.

She fell into her rack heavily. The days seemed somehow longer. Organizing flight rosters cost her a lot time. Then there was flying CAP and maintenance shifts. When those were settled she had to report to the ready room where she discussed tactics with the commander and some other officers to prepare for their ground expedition on Kobol.

With no leads from the reunited fleet, Commander Adama had decided their only option was to try to gather intelligence on the surface. Their recon ships had detected definite Cylon presence on the surface. Their best chance at gaining a lead was to capture one of the enemies and interrogate something out of them.

Kara suspected that Adama was getting desperate for any clue to their people's location. He had even allowed the pregnant Sharon Valerii out of the brig to talk about their plan. She was now working with Gaeta and Gaius Baltar on a device to extract data from the enemy, as it was unlikely that any of them were going to talk willingly. Sharon seemed determined to gain the commander's trust. The two of them talked together for long periods of time. Most of the crew grew nervous at the idea, Kara among them. But the Cylon was always restrained and Adama always seemed in control and calm.

Kara turned over in her rack to stare at the ceiling. The ground mission was set to begin tomorrow. She had been first to volunteer to go. Every time she slept she'd dream of the farm and wake up sweating. Kara would look at the empty racks Lee, Kat and Hot Dog used to occupy and feel scared for them. They'd been in the Cylons' hands for longer than she had. What state would they be in if _Galactica_ finally made it to them? Kara even felt scared for Colonel Tigh. She had no love for him, but he didn't deserve this.

She hadn't told Adama the details of the farm. She _couldn't._ But it gnawed on her nerves so much that doing the mission was the only way she could assuage the feelings. At least she'd be doing something about it now instead of sitting around with her thumbs up her ass. She knew they needed information before they went gallivanting off across the galaxy in search of any old Basestar. That didn't stop her from feeling antsy though.

Kara thought through the plan. It wasn't going to be easy capturing one of the Cylons. Sharon had said that one like her would be more reliable to take data from. She could download everything off a Centurion, but they wouldn't be as good. They wouldn't be nearly as accurate. It was also important that they don't _kill_ any of them, especially one of the skin jobs. They would just reincarnate and let the rest of the Cylons know their plans. Kara thought it was obvious that they would be looking for their people. The Cylons didn't need anyone to tell them that. But she trusted the reasons Adama gave for secrecy.

She looked over to Lee's empty rack.

"Where are you?" she signed, then turned over to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

_Five Days Later_

Kara led the team up the hills and through the valleys. Their sector hadn't had any contact with Cylons since they landed. She checked in with _Galactica_ every twelve hours to report their failure. Dee would answer their calls and inform them that none of the other groups had found anything either. They were coming up on their check-in time quick.

Kara turned to the marine behind her. "When we reach the top of that next hill, call _Galactica_."

"Yes, sir."

She trudged through the mud with her group. It had rained for every day that they'd been planet-side. None of them had been properly dry or gotten enough sleep. It had been expected. Doc Cottle had sent them with emergency stimms, but no one wanted to take them. Each member of her team seemed just as motivated to find their friends as Kara was.

Adama had ordered them to return to the ship in a week if nothing turned up so that a relief crew could take their place. She knew the commander would have them canvas the whole rock if he had to. Before Kara left for the surface, Adama had summoned her to his quarters. He looked remarkably overworked. Everyone did.

When Kara had arrived, he was looking at the picture the knuckle draggers had found for him in the archives. He looked up from the plaque and waved her in. She sat across from him at his desk, the way she had when she first got back to _Galactica._

"Did you know that Lee always used to run away when I came home on leave?" Adama asked. He sounded half amused and half sad.

A smile tugged at her lips. "No, sir. He never told me that. Sounds like him though."

He chuckled once. "He would go stay with some friend and refuse to see me. So I would spend the whole time with Zak. Zak was always easy. He always tried to convince me to stay longer."

The smile had fallen off Kara's face. "He admired you very much, sir. He loved you."

"I realize now that he just needed my attention. I was too busy being mad at Lee to give him what he needed. I got him killed because I didn't listen to him." He looked up from the picture with emotion all over his face. "I've killed both of my sons because I wouldn't listen to them."

"Lee is _not dead_, sir. There was nothing you could have done to stop any of this from happening." Kara leaned forward and stared right into Adama's face. "We're going to find him. We're going to find _all_ of them, and they're going to be _fine_. I'm going down there and we'll be one step closer to finding them."

He still looked unconvinced. She added in a low voice, "If you give up on him now, you _will_ have killed him. The best thing we can do for Lee is to keep looking for him and not stop until he's here again." Kara stood up. "We'll find him, sir."

She was almost to the hatch when he called out to her. Kara turned in time to catch something he'd tossed to her. She opened her hand to see a lighter.

"What's this?"

He was back to looking at the picture. "It was my father's lighter. Said he never lost a case unless he forgot it. Called it his good luck."

Kara rolled it over in her hand and looked at the engraving. The more she looked at it she began to recognize it as the one Lee had used to light the cigar she'd given him after the tylium mission. The same lighter he had tossed back to his father on the hangar deck. _Called it his good luck_.

"Bring it back, Kara. It's a damn good lighter."

"Captain Thrace!" one of the marines called, shaking her from her memories. She was back on the surface of Kobol. "You better see this!"

She charged up to the crest of the hill where the marine was standing. He was pointing down to a group of Centurions standing sentinel beside the entry way to a chamber that seemed to be masquerading as a rock.

"My gods, they found it."

"Found what, sir?" the marine asked.

"The Cylons are in the Tomb of Athena. They have the map to Earth." Kara did some quick thinking. "Get the group together. We've got an assault to plan."

A short time later everyone had gathered around her on the crest of the hill looking down at the Cylons. This was low hanging fruit if she'd ever seen it.

"Okay, buzz cuts, here are our objectives. We need to preserve at least one of those toasters. We'll assume there are more inside. We take out three of the four from various places out here. We'll need a small group to sneak down before we take out the three of them. Once those ones are down, the strike team will disable the forth. _Disable_ only, don't damage the frakking thing's head. Valerii says that's the part we need, so rip its head off, I don't care. Just don't shoot in there.

"When we all get down there, we'll send two teams into the Tomb of Athena. One to clear the area. If you see Cylons call the second group in _immediately. _If it looks like there are too many in there, say so and get the frak out. We'll regroup here. Any questions?"

One marine asked, "Don't the scriptures say we'll need the Arrow of Apollo to get into the Tomb?"

"And I have the Arrow. I had a feeling we might…" Kara trailed off. "Doesn't matter, looks like the front door is open."

The strike team assembled of two experts in hand-to-hand combat departed to circle around so they came up behind the Cylons. Three sharp shooters spread out and took their positions. They had to look like they weren't all coming from the same direction. Kara spread the rest of the group out, so that the Tomb was virtually surrounded where they had the high ground.

Everyone hunkered down and waited for their clocks to count to the agreed upon time to begin assault. All at once the hills came alive with the fire of the sharp shooters. The three Cylons dropped from the head shots, each marine hitting their mark perfectly. Kara jumped up with the rest of the marines and swiftly moved down to the Tomb. The strike team was struggling with the last Cylon, not wanting to damage it. The Centurion was succeeding in doing more damage to them than they were to it.

One of the specialists in Kara's group pulled out a stun gun and nailed the toaster in his would-be heart. The enemy quickly shorted and shut down to cool its circuitry. The two in the strike team made quick work of removing the head from the rest of it.

"Nice one, Sparky," Kara complimented her. "Here's to hoping the data wasn't damaged."

"Thank you, sir." The marine put her weapon away.

"Okay, teams, split up. Sparky, why don't you and Sweat Stain over there keep watch? One by the entrance and one do rounds. No schedule, keep it unpredictable. Get the snipes into the rotation when they get down here. Group one, with me. Wait for my signal, group two."

Forming up around her, one of the marines took point and they entered the Tomb with much less bravado than one would expect. Inside they found ruins. They were all mesmerized. If they each didn't have such ingrained training, each would have lowered their weapon and gazed in awe.

"What are they?" one of them asked after they had failed to find any other Cylons inside.

"I think they're the gods, in their ancient descriptions," another, more devout, marine answered.

Kara saw that they were indeed. She walked around the circular chamber, examining each ruined masterpiece. This wasn't a tomb, for sure. More like a deserted temple. Pulling the tube containing the Arrow off of her back, Kara began looking around for a keyhole or something that might give her a hint about what to do next. She stopped at the cracked statue of the archer and looked at his drawn bow that was missing its arrow. She was about to drop it into place when movement beyond the statue caught her eye. Her sidearm was un-holstered and trained on it in an instant.

"Walk forward slowly," she ordered. Her marines backed her up and trained their weapons on the figure, too. "What are you?"

"Don't you know me, Kara Thrace?"

The Cylon called Leoben walked forward, hands held up beside his head.

"You," Kara breathed.

"Remember when I said you were special? That you had a destiny? Well here we are, the two of us in the Tomb of Athena and you have the Arrow of Apollo. That's not special, is it?"

She could hardly breathe. Still gripping her weapon, she ordered, "Bind and gag him. Have group two watch him. We're almost done here. Tell them to contact _Galactica_ and inform them that the mission has been accomplished. Request transportation immediately."

"Now, now," Leoben said. The marines were binding his hands and putting a collar around his neck. "Why don't we discover Earth together? I've been waiting a long time for you to bring that Arrow, Kara. Perhaps we were destined to be here together."

"Gag him!" Kara screamed.

And so it was.

She took a moment to calm herself after the Cylon was taken out. Someone asked if she was okay. She grumbled for them to shut the frak up and continued to drop the Arrow into its place on the bow. 'Drop' wouldn't be the right word, Kara thought. It seemed more like an intense magnetic field sucked it right into place. Instantly, the door slid shut and the lights were gone. But it was only for a second. New lights filled the ceiling and suddenly they were surrounded by grass and pillars. She looked up to see little stars shining down on them.

"What is this?" one of them asked.

Kara looked from the pillars with dots and lines and strange words engraved on them to the starry walls. Suddenly it all fell into place.

"It's Earth."

* * *

It had been a long time since any of them had seen Tigh. Indeed, none of them had been allowed out of the room since they led him away, at least not that they were aware of. It was common knowledge that the Cylons were gassing them and doing lords-know-what while they were out. Lee was beginning to feel his nerves fraying confined to the room. Ellen was inconsolable, crying or gasping practically nonstop since she joined the group. Kat would whisper things under her breath or try to talk to anyone.

The president was showing signs of wear as well. Her aid, Billy, always seemed to be hovering around all the time, so Lee just left him to it. Roslin probably preferred it this way since she knew him so well. He was glad someone was taking care of her. He didn't think he could do it in the shape he was in.

Instead of healing, the incisions on both pilots were turning swollen and bruised. Neither could stand up straight nor walk very far. Lee was fairly certain they were infected, or going to be infected if they weren't already, because of the fever both were running and the lack of any water they could have used to clean the wounds. The stress of it all was beginning to weigh on him. He worried over Hot Dog not being able to get up much, and the deteriorating state of Roslin. She needed a doctor as soon as possible. Lee could practically hear the cancer gaining its strength back. Ellen looked like she would never come out of her psychosis and Tigh was still AWOL. Chills shook his whole body every time he thought about the colonel.

It wasn't until they all finally woke up from a gassing that they found Saul Tigh back among their numbers. He wore homemade bandages on his hands and countless cuts and bruises everywhere else. Ellen had finally stopped crying and the two stayed in each other arms for a long time. They were finally interrupted when Billy announced that the president was gone.

And so she was.

"They must have taken her when he came back," the young man said, thinking aloud. "We have to get her back! What if something happens to her?"

"Calm down, Billy. She can take care of herself," Lee said. "Besides, there's nothing we can do."

Billy sank down against the wall with his head in his hands, feeling guilty. Tigh was staring at the man before he snapped himself out of it. Lee felt Tigh staring at him as if he'd just remembered something. The colonel came over to him, looking awkward as ever.

"You look frakked, Apollo," he said, ever a delicate man with words.

"Thank you, sir." He shifted in the least painful way he'd found over the past week so he was situated more appropriately. "What happened, Colonel?"

The elder man shrugged. "They interrogated me. Classic tactics. They wanted my name and information on the fleet. They kept asking about Valerii and Thrace. They could only get so much out of me before I became useless. I suppose they've moved on to the other important person here."

"What did they want to know about Kara?"

"Hell if I know. I don't even know where the fleet is, so I was useless to them. I said Valerii was gone and Thrace had left for Caprica." Tigh suddenly leaned in close to Lee and growled in his ear, "They're going to interrogate all of us, make no mistake. I don't think they know you're the commander's son, so whatever you do, don't frakking tell them. They'll use you against Bill if they knew; twist his arm by threatening to frak you up. And they will. So you better lie and say you're just some nobody-pilot. It's only a matter of time before they go straight to the fleet and demand an exchange. They'll take us right to _Galactica_, so we need to just hang tight until then."

Lee's stomach cramped up then, so he just nodded his understanding. It happened a lot to both pilots. The only thing for it was to breathe through it. When it passed, he said, "What I would do to have Cottle yelling at me right now…"

Tigh actually laughed at that. "Wouldn't we all? I wouldn't mind having to deal with Starbuck if it meant I didn't have to be here."

Lee tried to smile but it turned into a grimace. "Don't think it hurts that bad yet, Colonel."

He spat out another laugh.

"So why am I the only one getting the pep talk, Colonel?"

Tigh's face turned serious once again and maybe even a little sad. "Because you're the only one the old man would ever make a deal with the Cylons for."

* * *

Note:

This whole story is largely completed so updates will come relatively quickly. I could probably post all the way up to the point where most people tie up the annoying strings at the end. But I won't because I am lazy.

Fun fact: I came up with the title while watching _How the Universe Works_. It's an astronomy term, if y'all didn't know.

If you're reading this still, I am infinitely appreciative.

Cheers,

E.R.


	5. Chapter 5

Roslin hadn't been gone half as long as Tigh had when the humans were gassed again. Lee never got a chance to ask the president if she was okay because he found himself separated from the group when he woke up. It looked like they'd moved him to a laboratory. A Cylon was moving around beside him. It noticed he was alert.

"Nice to see you, Captain." The Cylon smiled down at him.

"What are you doing?" Lee asked stupidly. As if the enemy would just say what he was doing. Lee felt like he was underwater and nothing was as sharp as it should be.

"We're just running some tests." He used a syringe to inject a brown liquid into the line that flowed right to Lee's chest.

He felt quite alarmed to see that. He hadn't realized anything was there. "What is this?" he referenced the tube.

Calm as ever, the Cylon replied, "We gave you a central line. It'll be easier and faster to conduct our tests this way."

Blankly, "I'm a lab rat. You're experimenting on me."

"If you want to put it that way, I suppose so. We've done so for the entire duration of your time with us." He pulled a chair up and sat. "It's going to take a while for that to kick in. Now that I've got you up, how about we talk?"

Lee just blinked at him. He tried to shift and sit up but his body wouldn't respond. He was paralyzed. Anger flooded him but he kept it bottled for now. To the Cylon he said, "I can't move."

He smiled. "Just a precaution. Don't worry; it's not permanent. Can't have you getting up to fight us or have you rip out the central line. You understand."

It wasn't a question so Lee didn't respond.

"So I know your rank, Captain, but what's your name?"

Tigh's warning came echoing through Lee's foggy brain. They didn't know who he was. They _couldn't_ know who he was. He was supposed to lie. Despite thinking this, he mouth was set to automatically say, "Captain Adama, Lee, CAG Battlestar _Galactica_," but he caught himself halfway through. Instead it came out, "Captain Ad…am Lakes. I'm a pilot from the Colonial Fleet." _Frak me! _he thought. _Adam Lakes? Might as well have not even tried._

The Cylon, however, didn't seem to notice. "Well, Adam Lakes, I hate to say that you were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. We need some information that we know you possess. We can do this the easy way, where you answer my questions, or this will get messy." The Cylon slapped Lee in his compromised side. "So what do you say?"

Looking up at the ceiling, he clenched his jaw and braced himself for what was sure to come.

The Cylon asked, "Where is Kara Thrace?"

Nothing.

"Where is Sharon Valerii?"

Nothing.

"Where is the fleet now?"

Nothing.

"Do you know the location of Earth?"

Nothing.

"Alright, then." The Cylon took the captain's hand and crushed it in his mechanized one until there was an audible crack. The human refused to make a sound, making the whole gesture very unsatisfying to the machine.

"Where is Kara Thrace? …Where is Sharon Valerii? ... Where is the fleet now? ... Do you know the location of Earth? …" Each finger was popped or cracked twice, once between each knuckle. "Where is Kara Thrace? …Where is Sharon Valerii? …Where is the fleet now? …Do you know the location of Earth?" He took hold of the broken hand and swiftly plucked his thumb nail out of its bed.

"Where is Kara Thrace?" First finger.

"Where is Sharon Valerii?" Second finger.

"Where is the fleet now?" Third finger.

"Do you know the location of Earth?" Fourth finger.

On it went. The same four questions were posted to Lee. His silence to each question resulted in a pluck or snap to the same hand. He was starting to see black dots again and dizziness jumbled around in his head. He was barely hanging on to consciousness when the Cylon switched tactics. He exposed the swollen wound on Lee's stomach.

"Where is Kara Thrace?"

Silence. The machine dragged a scalpel through incision with a twist. Shooting pains went through him.

"Where is Sharon Valerii?"

Silence. Another twist.

"Where is the fleet now?"

Silence. Twist.

"Do you know the location of Earth?"

Silence. Calm as ever, the Cylon stabbed the scalpel into the swollen flesh until it cut new flesh. The human made a whimper of pain before passing out. Machine had broken man's silence. Turning to its brother, he said, "Clean him up. I'll be back tomorrow."

* * *

Bill stood behind Gaius Baltar, Lieutenant Gaeta, and Sharon Valerii. Their data extractor was running through the information they'd obtained from the Centurion and cross-referencing it with the harder-to-get data from the human-like Cylon. This was taking excruciatingly long weeks to complete.

"We've spent a lot of time trying to get the bugs and firewalls down in the Centurion. Sharon's been able to decrypt most of the files," Gaeta explained. "What we've found out definitely is that there were four Basestars when _Astral Queen_ jumped into orbit. The other Cylon's data confirmed that. The Centurion knew that the prisoners were taken to the same Basestar, so wherever they are, they're still together. The four Basestars jumped away to separate coordinates."

"Do you know where they were headed?" Bill asked.

"Yes, well, that…that's a bit more di—difficult to determine, you see," Gaius Baltar stuttered. "The…the _other_ Cylon had that information."

"Do you have the coordinates or not, Doctor?"

"We do, sir," Sharon Valerii said. "We don't know which ship went to which set of coordinates or which ship the hostages are on. The information is probably in him," she pointed to the skin job. "But it'll be encrypted. We're made to delete sensitive information when threatened to stop things like what we're doing from happening. That data will be gone forever if we go and just try to decrypt it."

"What do you suggest?" Bill looked at her. He'd begun putting a small amount of trust in the girl. _If that's what she is._

"The only way we can find out without risking losing the information all together is to ask him."

Bill looked at the other two. "And what do you two say?"

"It seems like the only safe way, sir."

"I agree," Baltar said. "It's already been abused. It didn't deserve that."

Bill knew what had gone into extracting the data from the human imitation. He couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for the machine or regret his actions, though. "You can rest assured the Cylons are doing worse to our own people. Ask him. Do what you have to in order to get the location of our people out of him."

"Sir," Gaeta and Valerii acknowledged. Baltar spluttered recognition at the commander's back. He had already left.

Later, Kara bit the corner of her thumb nail. She looked more uncertain than Bill had ever seen her. CAG duties did not come to her naturally, but she was not bad at it. She was exhausted. They'd begun meeting in his quarters for a drink regularly these days. Today felt especially heavy.

"What do you think?" Bill asked. "Off the record, what would be your course of action?"

Kara sighed and rubbed her eyes with her free hand. "I don't know, sir."

"Tell me what you're stuck on."

"Sir, we _can't _abandon them to the Cylons. No one deserves to be sentenced to the rest of their life like that." Kara thought of Sue-Shaun. "But the rest of the fleet wants to keep looking for Earth. They think it's been two months so they're probably dead. They just want to settle down somewhere. Ever since it broke that we know where Earth is…We can't just drop them off somewhere. We can't separate the fleet again. It's not fair to risk them in this mission either. We're going to engage a Basestar in combat like this…several people _are_ going to get hurt. We can't put them on a silver platter."

"Is the entire fleet worth risking for seven people?" Bill summed up her thoughts.

"Yeah," Kara sighed, defeated. She looked Bill in the eye with tears welling up in her eyes. "They're not just any seven people."

Bill solemnly agreed.

"Do you think he's okay?" She was openly crying now. Not sobbing or making a scene, just letting tears fall. Kara had told Bill about the farm a few nights ago. He remembered a scene he had happened upon in his youth, during the first Cylon War, of Cylons experimenting and torturing humans. Both of them were sickened by the very possibility.

"I don't know." Bill couldn't give his de facto daughter the comfort she sought.

Kara couldn't hold back the single sob that escaped her. "The frakking idiot. Why did he leave with her?"

A smile tugged at Bill's lips. "Wouldn't be Lee if he didn't."

"Yeah, well, I'm going to kick his frakkin ass next time I see him."

"Not before I do," the commander said with equal parts seriousness and humor.

It was easy for them to talk this way. If they both acted like they were going to find Lee in a day or two, it was easier to believe he was still alive. Their stillness was interrupted by the commander's phone vibrating in its cradle and the Klaxons blaring. Battle stations.

"Adama," he said into the phone.

"Sir, we've got a Basestar on DRADIS," Gaeta said. "They've launched Raiders but aren't attacking. We're receiving a hailing signal from the ship."

"I'll be right there." He hung up, to Kara he said, "Get to your fighters."

"Sir," she stood and they exited one after the other towards their respective destinations.

Bill arrived in CIC and turned into Commander Adama without missing a beat. "Launch alert fighters. Don't attack unless provoked. Put the Basestar through." He took a breath and picked up the receiver.

"This is _Galactica _actual."

"Hello, _Galactica_, this is the Cylons," the voice was thick with false friendliness, sarcastic. "I believe we have something that belongs to you."

"You have our people." It wasn't a question.

"We do indeed. But you also have something we want. Two things actually."

Time to play.

"We don't make deals with Cylons."

"Are you sure? You haven't heard my offer yet. We'll give you your people back if you give us the pregnant Cylon in your brig. We also want Kara Thrace to surrender."

Bill was stunned. Kara? He quickly adjusted. "I can't give you any more of my people."

"Commander, logic dictates that the lives of seven outweigh the life of one. And our own person, which I'm sure you don't count as life."

He ignored the remark. "I can't even be certain my people are still alive."

"You're just going to have to take our word for it."

"I can't do that." Bill almost laughed at the notion. "I want to speak with them, hear their voices for myself."

"You can speak to _one _of them. See, Commander? We can compromise."

"I haven't agreed to anything."

"But you will."

"What if I only give you one of the things you want?" Bill asked.

"Then you'll only get some of your people back. It's no problem for us. We'll find some use for them. Some are already helping us with some research."

Bill was sure he knew what that meant. It made the situation only that much more dire. "If you've frakked with any of them-"

"Oh, Commander, you and I both know they've already sustained some damage. We admit that we aren't as good at taking care of humans as you are. Look, your XO is here. He's been quite cooperative."

There was no sound for a moment, but then Saul Tigh's voice filled Bill's ear.

"Commander," his old friend said. His voice sounded rough.

"Are you okay, Colonel?" was his first question.

"I'm still in one piece."

"Ellen?" What he wanted to ask was _is my son alive?_

"She's probably handling this best out of all of us."

"And the president?" _My son, Colonel!_

"She's not looking too good, but she's hanging in there. Don't know how much longer she can do it, though. She's got that kid looking out for her." Saul didn't wait for him to ask. "The pilots are in pretty bad shape, Commander. But we're all still breathing."

There were a thousand questions Bill wanted to ask, but the Cylon's voice came back over the wire.

"Well there you have it, Commander. Your people are all still fine. What say you?"

His mind raced. "I accept. Sharon Valerii and Kara Thrace for the seven hostages."

"Good. Meet us at these coordinates in eight hours. It's a planet whose surface should be hospitable for you humans. The exchange will happen there. We'll leave a beacon for you to find us on the ground. Oh, and Commander, try any funny business, and we _will _kill them. The clock starts now. Commander."

The line went silent. Bill put the receiver back in its cradle.

"The Basestar has jumped away," Gaeta announced.

"Did you get the coordinates, Mr. Gaeta?" Bill asked patiently.

"Yes, sir."

"Dee, please summon the CAG, Mr. Baltar, Chief Tyrol, and the captain of the marines to the ready room. Have them bring Sharon Valerii up from the brig. Mr. Gaeta, if you would come with me."

"Yes, sir," Dee and Gaeta said together.

Bill looked at his interim XO, Tigh's replacement of two months. "You have the con."

"I have the con."

Commander Adama left CIC with Gaeta at his heels.

"Sir," Gaeta said nervously. "We're not really giving them Starbuck, are we?"

"That's what we're about to discuss, Lieutenant."


	6. Chapter 6

They must look like a joke, Saul Tigh thought. Three skin jobs led their caravan over the surface of the planet. They were in a field with tall grass. Saul was amazed that anything grew in the cold. While not deadly, it certainly wouldn't have supported any vegetation on Caprica. The metallic footfalls of the Centurions couldn't even be heard over the crunch of the iced-over grasses. The skin jobs halted the group and had another set up the beacon. The ring of Centurions around the humans armed their weapons and faced away from them into the openness of the field.

"What if they don't come?" Ellen asked him in a hushed voice, her breath fogging up the air in front of them.

"They'll come, Ellen." Saul felt annoyed at his wife.

They were interrupted by the sound of Hot Dog being sick. Kat was supporting the pilot and led him away from the steaming vomit. Billy, the aid, guided the president away from it. Lee groaned on Saul's shoulder. He'd been half-dragging the captain since their shuttle landed on the surface. Ellen was the only one not helping one of the injured.

"It feels hot, Colonel," Lee choked out to Saul.

All three pilots were alternating between fever and hypothermia and couldn't rely on their own senses to judge temperatures. Saul doubted very much that Lee had any idea where he was or what was going on. He knew the Cylons had picked the three of them to experiment on. Saul couldn't imagine what the goal of these tests was other than to make the pilots as miserable as possible.

"It _is_ hot, Captain," he lied.

"Good." Saul watched him wipe the sweat on his forehead off with his grotesquely bruised and swollen hand. His arm returned to its place of protection over the bloodstain on his stomach. Lee resumed shuddering against Saul's shoulder as he had done the whole way here.

_Hurry up, Bill_ he thought.

It seemed he did. It wasn't long after the thought that there was a sonic boom announcing ships entering the atmosphere. Fifteen minutes later the party from _Galactica _was making its way toward them. Marines clad all in black led the force. The commander himself was in the center of the group with a selection of officers and the two bargaining chips. The Centurions stepped closer together, shrinking the humans' space considerably.

Lee lifted his head. "What's going on?"

"They're here," Saul whispered. "Shut up."

The skin job stepped up to the empty space between the two groups. Adama went out to meet him with two marines floating around behind him. The commander quickly looked right at Saul and the man on his shoulder. It seemed to stiffen his resolve. The leaders' words were lost in the wind so Saul couldn't hear what was being said. Bill turned to his group and they walked Starbuck, hands bound, down beside him. She looked particularly disgruntled and shot icy glares at the commander. The skin job pointed to Roslin, Billy, and Ellen, summoning them to his side. They went meekly with a Centurion guard.

There was a brief pause before Starbuck was transferred to the Cylons and the three others were released. Adama had a med team escort them away in a flash. The skin job summoned Saul and Kat. Both made their way slowly down to him, trying not to drop their partners. Hot Dog was sick again, but they kept on moving. Lee took one step on his own for every four Saul did. He was grateful for the effort he was making. The colonel wasn't in perfect condition by any means and dragging the other was no easy feat for him.

Finally, _finally,_ they made it down to the skin job and _Galactica_'s party. Breathing heavily, they stopped and looked at their people. So close, yet so far away. Bill looked at Saul with questions in his eyes. The XO inclined his head a fraction of an inch to give some sort of answer. The commander looked to Kat and Hot Dog with the same questions. She gave him the shadow of a smile and nodded to Hot Dog.

Bill turned to his group and called, "The Cylon, then."

There was shuffling as the marines began freeing a copy of Sharon Valerii. Saul was stunned. It appeared to be pregnant. His trance was broken when Lee's breath caught in his throat. A grunt of pain escaped his lips and his legs gave out. Startled, Saul frantically grabbed at him to stop him from falling on the ground. Bill was staring with guarded eyes, not wanting to betray anything. He looked from his son to Saul. The colonel shook his head once as Lee got his feet back beneath him.

Sharon Valerii was escorted beside the commander. They all paused for a moment. The skin job broke it.

"Just send her over here and you can have your XO and pilots back. We'll all live to fight another day."

Bill looked at the Cylon with a hard face. "I can't do that."

Not a second after the words left his mouth a loud, whinnying screech echoed across the field. Gun shots rang through the air at the same time Saul was knocked to the ground on top of Lee. Confusion descended. There were shouts, both human and Cylon. Orders were tossed around; Cylon weapons finally began to respond. Saul was knocked around on the ground and he could no longer find Lee around him. There was the loud whirl of a Raptor coming into range. A hand gripped Saul's arm and began to drag him away.

"Sorry about this, Colonel, but we haven't got the time," Starbuck was saying to him, the bonds on her hands broken. Covering fire paved their way to the rear of the group. A woman's scream caught Saul's attention but he couldn't find the source. Was it Ellen?

"Frak," Starbuck muttered. "Kat! They've still got Kat."

She dropped him off in the safety of the rear where a Raptor squad would pick him up.

"Apollo?" Saul asked the body next to him.

"No, sir," it answered. "Costanza, Hot Dog."

Kara ran back into the fray. Several Centurions had been disabled by their signal, but more were coming across the field with weapons blazing. They were supposed to wait for the med Raptors to leave with the hostages and Sharon Valerii before retreating. Kara looked around frantically for Kat. Her screams came across the field again, and Kara saw her. A skin job was dragging her away, toward the Cylon rear. There was no way they'd get her.

"Lee!" the commander's voice reached her. She immediately looked for both of them.

"Dad?"

Kara saw Lee struggling to get on his feet in the grass, completely and utterly lost. He looked like he had no clue where he was or how he had gotten there. Dread seemed to swallow her whole. Adama wasn't close enough to his son. The Cylons were closing in with their superior force. They would never reach him in time. The captain of the marines seemed to realize this too, because he was dragging Kara away from the battle, toward a Raptor under covering fire. It took three marines to restrain the commander who was making valiant attempts to free himself and reach his son despite knowing the futility of it all. Lee kept looking around and calling for his father, sure he'd seen him just a moment ago. But then a Centurion clubbed him in the head and he collapsed in the grass.

The marine shoved Kara into a Raptor and took off almost immediately. A second and final one followed suit with the commander. The centurions fired after them, but with no heavy weapons, no damage befell them. They entered the vacuum of space and promptly jumped away. Kara Thrace didn't feel anything.

* * *

Louanne Katraine could do nothing but grip her leg and cry. A bullet had clipped through her thigh. Not enough to kill but enough to bring agony. It was a bleeder but didn't seem serious so long as she kept pressure. She never got emotional, always kept herself in check. Sure she'd felt the pressure when she was in a Viper, but she always turned out okay in the end. After all there were only two options in a Viper: you die or you make it back to _Galactica_.

Here there were too many unknowns.

"His frakking son!" the Cylon Leoben yelled. "The whole time and we had his son! Lord, would you believe it?"

The Centurion who was with him did all the dirty work of course. Leoben didn't want to damage his pretty synthetic skin. His rant had been going on for a long time now. Kat thought that he might have cooled down when Apollo lost consciousness, but the Centurion went right on beating his lifeless form to within an inch of his life unless Leoben told him not to.

"Was it hard before, Young Adama? You have _no idea!_ We told them, _no funny business_ and now they're going to get their comeuppance."

And then he was gone, the Centurion banging after him. Kat dragged her leg with her across the floor, still crying hard. Shifting him onto his back, she put a hand on the captain's chest. It still rose and fell, though not smoothly. He wheezed when he drew breath.

"Captain," she croaked through her tears. "Captain, you have to wake up." Her hands were starting to sweat as her fever returned. Dizziness set in, but the hand she kept grounded on Apollo's chest anchored her. She laid her head down to wait. She'd make sure he breathed the whole time. Kat grabbed his hand, the one that was broken and swollen with the two fingers that wouldn't fully extend anymore. "You're all I got, Cap. Don't die yet."

They lay on the floor and had fever dreams together.


	7. Chapter 7

Bill Adama sat amongst the ruins of his model ship. It did little to make him feel better, but it was still an improvement. As he numbed over, a tiny pang of regret for the ship touched him. In the chasm of nothingness, that small feeling touched him. It was small comfort to know he was still able to feel anything. He wasn't sure he wanted to.

Bill breathed it out. He remembered the fleet and his responsibilities. Now was not the time to be selfish. He should be proud to have recovered five of seven without sacrificing anything of his own. In the present climate of human existence, that number was damn near beautiful. It was all hallow to him, though. The one he could not go on without wasn't among the five. Bill had failed. No one had said the words aloud, but everyone who had been summoned to that ready room had known the plan was motivated by regaining Lee. Anyone else rescued, the president or the ship's own XO, was just a bonus; a side without an entrée. He felt guilty for thinking it, but Bill wouldn't deny the truth of the thoughts. Saul was his oldest friend and the president was vital to the civilians in the fleet to find hope to keep going in, as a pilot Hot Dog kept the fleet safe. Even the young aid to the president, whatever his name was, played a role in helping maintain the president and have things run as smoothly as possible after the end of the world. Shit, Bill thought, even Ellen was of value. It could be argued that each was more valuable than his son. Although people would deny the importance of one person over another, they all kept each other ranked by value.

Military protocol always said to recover the highest ranking officer and any civilians. That is what they had done, but not what Bill had wanted. He couldn't say that to his crew, of course. But he was thinking it and they all knew he was thinking it. If it really came down to it, Bill would have saved his son and left them all there to die. _But that's exactly what you didn't do_ the small voice inside his head reminded him._ Anyone can be president. Anyone can be XO. Not just anyone can pilot a Viper. We _need_ Vipers, you fool. What's a president going to do when the Cylons attack? Is this XO going to get drunk and choke up when he's put in charge again? We need pilots more than anything and you just left two for dead. Not just anyone can be your son._

Bill wasn't sure how long he'd sat there feeling sorry for himself. It may have been a full day before the buzzing of his phone shook him. He moved to answer.

"Adama."

"Sir," it was Lieutenant Gaeta. "Doc Cottle wants you in sickbay. The colonel's been asking for you. Cottle says he's in the clear to be interviewed."

That gave Bill a timetable to reference. Cottle wouldn't let anyone into his sickbay unless there was beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were clear for recovery. True, he didn't let visitors stay long, but that he was allowing Bill unchecked time for interview put things in perspective. The state of the hostages was pretty horrific. Quite some time must have passed, then.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." The phone returned to rest. He collected the debris of his ship and smartened his uniform before leaving the hatch as the calm and steady Commander Adama.

Cottle wasn't available in sickbay, so a new student of his led the commander to his XO. Saul was partitioned off from the rest of the recovery area, perhaps to offer him some measure of privacy. Rumors about what happened to the hostages spread wildly around the ship and several hands were trying to get a look at any of them. His old friend looked both relieved and burdened to see him.

"Bill," he began. "I didn't see Lee. Is he here?"

The commander looked to his feet and walked closed beside Saul's bed. "We couldn't get to him. Or Kat."

"You mean he's…They've still got him?"

Bill remained silent.

"For frak's sake, they're still half kids," the XO said mostly to himself. "I should have held on to him—"

"That's enough, Saul." He finally looked at his friend. An almost silent thought whispered through his head that Saul should have been the one left behind. "Tell me what happened to you all in captivity."

He shifted in the bed uncomfortably, like he knew what Bill had been thinking. "Well, they kept most of us together in one room. At any given time at least one of us was separated from the rest being interrogated. Lasted a week and a half at most, the interrogation. They used the classic scare tactics and injury route. That's the only damage most of us got. They kept asking about Starbuck, and the Valerii Cylon. And they kept asking about Earth, like we knew where it was. Can you imagine!?"

Bill spoke, "We do know where Earth is, or we have a pretty good idea and a heading. Kara found it when she was canvasing Kobol looking for you."

"You're shitting me, Bill." It was a touch of awe and disbelieve in his voice. "Like the frakkin' scrolls say, and all? I suppose she used that Arrow, too."

"She did."

Saul shook his head, mumbling about the worlds having gone insane after it ended.

"The Cylons told us that some of you were participating in research," Bill asked after a pause. He wasn't sure he wanted to know the details. "What did they mean?"

"They were experimenting on the pilots. You saw them down there, sick as dogs. Hot Dog said he was getting injected with some pink liquid three times a day. Kat was waking up with all these suture scars on her, like they were taking samples of her organs. She held up better than Hot Dog. He just kept getting more and more ill. Is he alright?"

Bill had never seen Saul look so concerned for the crew before. He assured his friend that the pilot was stable the last he'd heard (an unknowable amount of time ago).

"He and Apollo had these big slashes over their stomachs." He mimed a cutting motion from his stomach to his side. "We didn't know what they were from. Neither was healing up at all. I think they were infected. Few weeks in all three were getting loopy with fever and chills. Apollo thinks they were injecting him with something and then collecting his blood after a few days."

"He _thinks_?"

"Like I said, the pilots weren't faring so well. Lee had hardly any idea where he was when he returned from the first interrogation. He didn't remember very well what they were doing to him. They kept us all mixed up. Gassed us all before they came or went so we hardly ever saw them. All of us were passed out when they opened the door. A good way to thwart any escape attempts."

"Do you have any idea where they might go next, Colonel?"

"You're not going after them, Bill! It's suicide."

"Do you know, Colonel?"

Saul must have realized the futility of it all, because he just shook his head in response. They were spared any awkward lingering when Doc Cottle appeared between the curtains followed by his usual cloud of cigarette smoke.

"What's the word, Doc?" Bill asked.

"I hope you weren't running this one too hard." He indicated Saul. "They all need to rest, no question about it. No one's going to die. If you'll come with me, Commander."

He led the way out of Saul's enclosure, with a final warning not to get up out of bed by the doctor, and into his small office. They each took a seat, and the doctor lit another cigarette. They were his one great ironic flaw. He'd be the first on to chastise the crew for smoking and its detrimental effects.

"Your pilot presented some interesting findings," Cottle began.

"Is that so?"

"Damn kid's filled with infection. That cut in his gut is the root or I'm a pro pyramid player. His blood work showed a presence of a foreign substance. We're working to flush it from his system now. It's probably what was making him so nauseated. He should be able to get to rehab and light duty once the infection clears up and his bones heal. All of them walking around like broken skeletons…"

It was true that the hostages had lost a lot of weight. Cottle figured that none of them were being starved, but were not receiving proper nourishment either. Based on examination, they had been sustained on feeding tubes administered when they were gassed (as none of them remembered actually having tubes pushed down their noses and into their stomachs). Many bones poked out of them, the broken ones almost visible. Cottle had set the broken ones and reset as many of the improperly healed ones as he could. He assured Bill that none of them would be feeling any pain right now, that he'd put them on some good stuff. The president was with Billy in their own private curtained-off world receiving some aggressive treatment to combat her cancer. She probably wouldn't be up for much in the next few days or even weeks.

"What do you think about the others?" Bill asked. "The ones that were left behind?"

Puffing on the tobacco stick, Cottle thought for a moment. "Judging from what the other hostages have told me and assuming the Cylons haven't killed them already, they probably don't have too long. Without proper medication, their fevers will burn them up and they'll die of dehydration. Two ill people can't maintain themselves on the nutrition the Cylons were providing. Another two weeks, maximum, and Lee will be completely septic if Costanza's any indication. Kat won't be long afterward."

The commander appreciated the doctor's candid answers. Cottle never bullshitted anyone.

"Thank you, Doctor," he said as they shook hands. "May I see my pilot Costanza?"

"If he's still awake, go for it. Not too long. Don't you dare wake him up if he's out. Commander or no, I won't have anyone harassing my charges."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Bill found Hot Dog hidden on the other side of Saul. He was still awake, reading from loose pages in front of him. He was about to acknowledge the commander's rank but Bill waved him off.

"How are you doing, Ensign?"

"Oh, fine, fine. Doc Cottle's got me on some really good stuff." The pilot hesitated. "I heard that Kat and Apollo didn't make if off-planet. It's not true, is it, Commander?"

"I'm afraid so."

The bony, pale man seemed to sag and grow paler. "I can't believe it."

Bill noticed that even lying down and pleasantly clouded with painkillers, the pilot still kept an arm draped over his stomach and curled around his right side the way he and Lee had done when he saw them on the planet's surface.

"Does it still hurt, Ensign?" he asked, meaning the cut in his middle.

"Hmm? Oh, no. I guess it's just a habit we got into. Doc said it was pretty deep and sloppy and probably did some muscle damage. It really hurt when we first woke up with them. Me and Apollo, I mean. Your son—I mean, he probably saved me from bleeding out that first time we woke up. He was a good man, sir."

Ignoring the past tense, Bill gripped the railing on the bed. "Do you think he's still alive, Costanza? Do you think he could survive a little longer?"

Hot Dog looked uncomfortable.

"I don't know, sir. The Cylons rode him pretty hard. I don't think he realized what was going on."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, after the first time they interrogated him…they kept him separated from us the longest, and I think it really did a number. He looked really bad when he showed up again. He thought they were taking his blood but he didn't remember a lot about what happened. Our fevers started to really act up then so _I _don't even remember a lot of what happened. The colonel was the one who was sort of taking care of him. Every time the Cylons brought Apollo back, he kept saying his bones hurt. Not like they were broken, he said they felt like they were on fire. He was always sort of dazed. Whenever he spoke it was to people who weren't there or something. Colonel Tigh was the one who'd look after him and try to bind up his wounds. I was out of it and he wasn't making sense anyway, so I don't know much.

"I guess to answer your question, Commander, no; I don't think he could survive very long on his own. Colonel Tigh carried him all the way from the Cylon shuttle to meet you guys in the field. He could hardly stand on his own, let alone escape or even _plan_ an escape. He probably doesn't know he's a hostage. But he's got Kat. She's a good fighter, sir. If they're together, they stand a chance. She'll look out for him until he's back in his right mind."

Bill nodded slightly as he digested everything Hot Dog had said. "Do you know if the Cylons were headed somewhere? Did they have an ultimate destination?"

"I don't know, sir. They kept us pretty blind. Once, before they knocked me out in their lab, I think I heard them say they planned to put us in one of the facilities with the rest of the test subjects. I didn't know what they meant."

A little disappointed, he thanked the young man and began to exit.

"Commander," Hot Dog said rather quietly. "I don't think the Cylons knew Apollo was your son. I think they would have treated him differently if they had. The colonel told him not to tell the Cylons his real name. I think he should have told them."

Bill didn't want to ask but he did. "Why's that?"

"They would have thought he was more important. They wouldn't dare risk him in experiments if they knew he was the only thing they needed to get what they wanted.

"Do they know now?"

"I'm pretty sure they do."

Hot Dog looked about ready to pass out; the medication's sedative becoming too strong. "…it's too bad. Sir, I think they're going to punish you for ambushing their…trade by taking it out on Apollo…I didn't want to say earlier, but I don't think they'll kill him, sir. They won't kill him…because they're going to keep…keep on torturing him. Worse for you if they keep experimenting and torturing him for the rest of his…life than to just simply…let him die. Cylons won't offer you another deal like that…now that they know this…is how bad you want him…b-back."

Bill kept his back to him and said, "Get some rest, Ensign," as he departed.

* * *

Note:

It might make things clearer that the timelines between each group of characters are not necessarily parallel.

Hurrah! I've completed all three levels of calculus. More importantly, I've completed this piece. I've got two weeks before next semester begins, so this will be done between now and then. (I've also been watching _Dexter_, so that is very time consuming. I can't focus on other things when I keep thinking about what's going to happen next in a series.)

My lovely phantom readers, I know you're there and if I could love something, it would be you.

Cheers,

E.R.


	8. Chapter 8

Kara didn't _want_ to be flying CAP, but she was. It was good for her to get out. She also wanted it to look like she was actually doing something and not moping around. Tigh's stand-in XO, possibly worse than the colonel himself, had mortified Kara when she'd been neglecting her CAG duties the past few days in wake of the recovery mission. She made this right by working constantly on her CAG duties and flying excessive CAP. She grew more tired as time wore on and hours spent awake racked up.

She thought of the new group of pilots they were supposed to get in. Kara knew they needed to replace at least two, maybe three as they waited for Hot Dog to recover. It didn't seem to her like he'd be back in action anytime soon. Her mind always wondered while flying CAP. Three hours in a cockpit and anyone would stray from the task at hand. The comms were quiet and there was nothing to do but think.

A lot of the knuckle draggers were keeping themselves busy with a new bird Tyrol was constructing. It seemed a good distraction. Kara teased the idea of pitching in as she flew through the vacuum of space. Lords knew she needed to keep herself busy lest she fall into the abyss that waited just beneath the surface. Last she'd heard there hadn't been anyone volunteering to pilot the monster. Maybe that would be a job just right for her.

Things on _Galactica _were really falling to shit. Most of the civilians in the fleet were demanding reasons for their decision not to pursue Earth, since they'd gotten a heading and direction down on Kobol. The fleet was jumping around, avoiding the Raiders that would always crop up. Kara knew Adama was taking a lot of heat from the fleet, as well as some of _Galactica_'s own crew, for dragging his feet on the search. The people broadcasting on the wireless called him selfish and Gaius Baltar, acting president as Roslin sought treatment, weak for not bullying the commander out of his grief over his son and back into his position of leadership. As a whole, the fleet was splintering. It never seemed to have recovered from the mutiny that occurred when Lee and Roslin sailed away for greener pastures.

They needed a leader. Baltar was faltering. He was more interested on working with the captive Cylon they'd captured on Kobol. For some reason, Adama had them working on it still, trying to extract every last bit of encrypted data out of it. As a result of that distraction, it was common knowledge that Tom Zarek was running things in the president's office, Baltar being just a figure-head. Kara hoped Roslin's health got better fast. They were on a collision course with disaster if she or the commander didn't take up the reins from Zarek. He purposely stirred up controversy at his conferences.

The Viper's radar started to ping the presence of another ship, jarring Kara from her thoughts. She checked the screen. It was showing a large unknown ship. She immediately reported back to _Galactica_ and to Jojo (who was flying with her).

"_Galactica_, Starbuck. We've got DRADIS contact out here."

"Roger, Starbuck. Return to base, combat landing authorized."

"Wilco, _Galactica_." Breaking her course, she turned around. "Alright, Jojo, let's go home."

The comms buzzed in Kara's head when the Basestar started hailing _Galactica._ She immediately thought it was the same one that had brokered a deal for the hostages a few days ago. Were they making another deal, demanding surrender? Lee and Kat might be aboard. Kara was ready to swing back in the direction she'd just been on and bust into their ship on a one-woman rescue mission. What she heard over the comms stopped her though.

"This is the Battlestar _Pegasus_ to the ship claiming to be _Galactica_. Confirm identity or prepare to be fired upon."

Several hours later, Kara sat among her pilots in the rec room. Nerves were running high, but most of the crew had found relief in it all as well. They'd been so excited to greet their _Pegasus_ counterparts. After the initial elation had worn off, many of them felt a sense of anxiety. They'd been on their own for so long. Being welcomed back into the 'official' fleet was cause for celebration, of course, but a few among them began to worry how they'd come together. They knew Admiral Cain outranked Adama, so command would clearly be hers. So many of them had come to relish working under Adama's command, they were apprehensive to see how her style would differ. Kara among them.

However, she did see possible opportunities in this. Was it so hard to believe that Admiral Cain would be a great leader and put _Galactica_'s splitting command back together? For some reason, it was hard to convince herself this would happen. She suspected Adama would not take kindly to someone else taking command of the fleet and directing things in their own direction. There was no way he'd take this lying down when he still had it in his head that Lee and Kat could be recovered. From the stories that had already started spreading between crews, Cain was not the type to be sympathetic toward a highly unlikely cause.

_A Few Weeks Later_

Hand gripping each other behind her back, Kara stood beside Adama. The words of the priest echoed in the hangar of the ship. The _Pegasus_'s XO walked up the podium to eulogize the Admiral. She looked to the reinstated President Roslin being supported by Billy. The service for Admiral Cain being one of her first appearances after she resumed her office, Laura Roslin did an excellent job looking somber for the occasion. Kara found it incredibly difficult to believe that face, knowing what they had planned, what she and the commander (now Admiral) had asked her to do. As the _Pegasus_ XO, now commander, began to speak Kara reflected.

For the most part, Kara had been right. The _Pegasus_ and _Galactica_ had a rough time getting on together. That was clearly evident when Chief Tyrol and Lieutenant Agathon were charged with murder of a superior officer and found guilty, and both Battlestars launched Vipers. That mess had been initiated when members of the _Pegasus _crew had attempted to rape Sharon Valerii. Apparently they had a Cylon prisoner of their own that was treated much differently than Sharon. It had not gone over well when they tried to use that practice aboard _Galactica_. Each was prepared to blow the other out of the sky. They didn't want to, but Commander and Admiral were each steadfast in their cause. They would stand their ground. Fortunately, it didn't come to human turning on human. Kara had jumped back from an unauthorized mission in the newly completed Blackbird Tyrol had led construction on a few weeks ago. The integrated crews were supposed to have been preparing for an assault mission on a Cylon resurrection ship, not killing each other. She interrupted the scrap right in time to save them a catastrophe. The pictures she'd gotten of the ship were enough for them to plan out a mission to destroy the Cylon fleet.

Things looked to have been smoothed over by then. With something they both agreed on to occupy their minds, Cain and Adama listened to the plan Kara (promoted to CAG on _Pegasus_ with the rank of major to go with it when Cain had ordered her transfer) had formulated with other pilots. The Blackbird would jump in and blow the jump drives of the resurrection ship. It would then clear the area while combined forces from _Galactica_ and _Pegasus _took out the rest of the Cylon fleet. It was a hard gamble with a high risk/high reward factor. With the resurrection ship stuck, the Battlestars would support Vipers taking out the Basestars and finishing off the resurrection ship. It was tactically sound. Cain and Adama cited their approval of the plan.

Before they were dismissed, the commander asked to speak with her privately. It still made Kara freeze up when she remembered the commander asking her to murder Admiral Cain. The stories about her had spread fast and each was more brutal than the next. The stories Colonel Tigh passed along to the commander were first hand from her own XO's words. Adama was totally convinced when the firing squad was ordered on Tyrol and Helo. He had become protective of his own crew, and the Cylon girl was one of them now. Not to mention his inability to move on from the botched recovery of the hostages. As predicted, Cain did not support the scouring of the entire universe for two likely-dead pilots. The fleet couldn't survive with someone like her in charge.

However, Kara didn't think this warranted her death. Maybe a mutiny or a coup could achieve the same means. But she was a soldier, no denying that. So when Adama, her father in almost every way but blood, asked her to shoot Cain in the head after the success and emotional high of the mission, she would not refuse. He asked, with the good of the fleet in mind.

And so she accepted.

She did her part in the mission. The Blackbird was successful in knocking out the jump drive. Both Battlestars worked in tandem to take out Basestars. The Vipers of both ships did their duty and took out parts of the Cylon fleet on their own. They were not without damages and losses. Both crews were together for once. When a pilot was lost, they all felt it. Kara more than most since it was _her_ plan and _her_ pilots. Being the CAG of both Battlestars was weighing on her already. She didn't think she could keep this up. She was certain she'd be killed for murdering the Admiral anyway. Kara could shoulder the burden of being CAG for this one mission.

She'd walked the corridors of _Pegasus_ in a cold sweat on her way to CIC. She couldn't help but think that she'd feel a lot better about all of this if Lee was with her. If she had someone to watch her back this could be so much easier. All Kara had was herself, just like old times. She had proven to herself over and over that was all she really needed. She entered the CIC and stood beside Cain. She clearly had no idea that the CAG she'd been almost instantly fond of had come up to kill her. If Kara was honest, she was pretty sure that Cain could be of use. The woman did what she had to do so that her fleet could survive. Kara respected that. Black and white, Kara's loyalty lay with Adama. She would follow him to anywhere. Even to Earth whether it existed or not.

The Admiral was on the line with Adama when she entered. The elder gave her the receiver and Kara had a choppy conversation with the commander. She'd waited with her breath caught in her throat as he spoke in her ear. He never said the word. Kara was confused, but relieved. Their agreed upon mark to commence the assassination was never spoken. Something or someone had convinced the commander otherwise. She couldn't imagine who, but she didn't want to look into it anymore. She wasn't about to question Adama's orders now. The burdens of being CAG had suddenly seemed small to having to end another human, a human she'd come to almost admire in some lights.

But somehow she'd ended up here anyway. Here, in the hangar beside the airlock filled with the bodies of those who didn't survive the mission. It was where the body of Admiral Helena Cain ended up anyway. Kara took a breath to steady herself. She couldn't look at Roslin the same. Kara knew the president had been part of the proposed plan to kill the former admiral. The supposed school teacher was hard to peg sometimes. One minute she went off about preserving the human race and not using prisoners for slave labor, and the next she was motivating a plot to assassinate the commander of the military.

The new commander of _Pegasus_, Jack Fisk, Kara recalled vaguely, finished his speech with roughness from emotion thick on his voice. Kara went to take his place and say her piece.

* * *

Bill had long given up on becoming admiral. From the position he was in now, Bill had to think that it had been a good dream to give up. Ever since he took the position, a rank he used to dream about in his youth, it seemed to bring him nothing but grief. In truth it wasn't so much different from being commander of the smaller fleet. But having _Pegasus_ slink around after them was difficult to get accustomed to. Commander Fisk was having a difficult time keeping things in line.

Nothing but shit had been raining down on him since. He supposed that he ought to be grateful for all the distractions. There was always some problem facing him, forcing him to focus on the issue at hand instead of on the crackpot missions he wanted to plan. He didn't mean to trivialize the very big problems facing the civilians, but organizing an investigation into the death of a Colonial officer and the fleet's black market served only as a way to keep Bill occupied until he figured out what he wanted to do.

He'd had to deal with Kara's recklessness in face of the mission to defeat the Cylon Raider they'd taken to calling Scar. Lieutenant Agathon had come to him with concerns about the CAG's behavior. That had taken some sorting out. When Bill had finally summoned Kara to his quarters she was mostly drunk. The situation had quickly devolved from there.

Bill had offered her a seat beside him on the couch.

And so she sat.

"I've been hearing things about you from the other pilots."

She rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. "Oh, yeah. What are the frakkers saying now?"

"They're worried about you."

Kara paused and gave him a sideways look. It was disbelieving.

"Are you going to make me ask?" he prompted.

"There's nothing wrong with me, sir. It's just an adjustment period." She sounded robotic, like she was reading off a prepared statement. "Being CAG over two ships isn't something I was prepared for, _sir_."

"You've been CAG for some time, Kara." He used her first name to let her know this wasn't a formal meeting. "It's something else."

She was quiet for a time. "Sir, you remember when I got back from Caprica and told you there were still people on the surface?"

"I do."

"I think we should send a rescue party back to get them. We've lost enough people. It's time to start getting some more."

"Caprica is occupied by Cylons. It's just as likely we'll lose as many people as we rescue."

"We can't just abandon those people. I can't abandon them. I've led too many pilots to their death and I'm not going to leave those survivors to die. Haven't we done enough of that?"

That one hurt, but Bill understood why she used it. He used reason to rebuke her.

"Believe me; I want to send a mission back there to save them. I don't want to abandon more people to the mercy of the Cylons anymore than you do. But it's not a smart tactical decision for us right now."

She put her head into her hands and felt her shoulders shaking. "I'm hung up on the ones we left behind there, sir. I promised I would get them off that planet. There was this guy…" Kara looked up at him with tortured eyes. Bill could almost feel her turmoil from his spot beside her. "There was this stupid, frakking guy down there and I can't get him out of my head. Ever since I got back he's been there and he just won't get off my mind. He's there all the time, the same way Lee's always on yours; I know it's true, sir, don't deny it."

She waited for him to deny it, but Bill was in the habit of not denying things that were true. He wouldn't break that now. Not to Kara, not his daughter.

And so she went on.

"Sir, if you knew where he was, if you _knew_ where Lee was…wouldn't you go and get him? No matter where in the universe, even beyond Cylon lines, you would go and bring him home to you in an instant, wouldn't you? If you knew where he was?"

Bill couldn't argue with her. "You and I both know I would. But I have you to tell me how stupid my plan would be and that I'm too close to the situation to make good calls."

Kara made a frustrated sound and covered her face again.

Bill kept going, "Kara, I promise you that we'll send a mission back to Caprica and rescue those people. You have my word. But not yet. You'll have to wait."

She took a moment to collect herself. She looked at him and asked, "I have your word, Admiral? You promise that we'll rescue those people on Caprica soon? Not now, but you promise that we'll do it soon?"

"I do."

"Okay, then. Sir," she acknowledged and stood up. Straightening her tanks, Kara headed for the hatch.

"Kara," Bill called out to his daughter. "What do you hear?"

She turned to look back at him with a flicker of a smile. "Nothin' but the rain, sir."

"Then grab your gun and bring in the cat."

"Yes, sir."

But the problems hadn't stopped there. With the cracks in Starbuck plugged for now, another fell into Bill's lap. A civilian held up a bar on _Cloud 9_ demanding Sharon as repayment for the death of her husband who had died after a Cylon attack on his ship. Ellen, who was there as a permanent resident after her captivity and recovery on _Galactica_, was one of the hostages in there during the hold up, so were Dee and Billy, Laura's assistant, who, rumor had it, were on date. They'd eventually concocted a plan to bring the terrorist the dead body of the Sharon that had shot Bill all that time ago. It hadn't gone over entirely smooth. All of the accomplices were killed in the firefight after they realized that all was not right with the months dead Cylon body. All hostages were recovered.

Things went on with a degree of calm after that. Bill would have preferred there be a little discontent or some issue to distract him from the missing people aboard the ship. Roslin had recovered, though still seeking regular treatments with Cottle, and was righting most of the damage that the negligence of Baltar and the purposeful discontent sewn by Zarek. Bill had her over for a drink often or met her on _Colonial One_ more than once. He liked having her around. He daresay he was growing fond of the woman. The companionship they'd formed was something Bill hadn't known for years. Certainly not since the few months after Zak had been born and he and Carolanne had found some semblance of peace within their marriage. Their illusion of a family was short lived after his second son was born, but it was a sweet time for as long as it lasted. Bill was sure there hadn't another time in his life that was ever as good as those months were. His family had never been quite the same after that. He found himself dwelling on thoughts of the time when it had been just the four of them making it work if only for those precious few months. It brought a smile to Bill's face when he remembered a two-year old Lee acting up against him, even at that age, upset that his little brother was getting all the attention.

Bill started telling Laura all of this for reasons unknown. She found them amusing and reciprocated with stories of her own time on Caprica, before the worlds had ended. Bill couldn't believe he'd minimized her as just a school teacher before. There was so much more to her that he found fascinating. He started to fill all his empty time with Laura Roslin's company. He thought he might be starting to heal and get over the stasis the loss of Lee had put him in.

Besides his growing relationship with the president, he had an issue with the command of _Pegasus_ to sort out. The crew was acting out and ineffective. He'd sent Kara over there to try to help Commander Fisk get a hold on his men. It had the opposite effect. She drove the man further up the walls. Bill decided to send over Helo to mend the fences between the two. He had always been professional and able to reach two opposing parties. He hoped the pilot would be able to work that skill again.

Fisk had foolishly followed a phony distress call from the Cylons his Raptors had pursued. He'd struggled in the barrage the Cylons had strung him into. When _Pegasus_ had jumped back to _Galactica_ and the rest of the fleet, Helo was in command of the Battlestar, well in over his head, and Fisk had been killed by radiation repairing the FTL coil. What would normally distress him in having to find another commander for the tumor that was _Pegasus_ was now a good challenge to occupy his time. His final solution was to put one of the Battlestar's own officers in command with the support and advice of Lieutenant Gaeta. Until Commander Hoshi had the ship under firm command, his own officer would monitor the ship for him.

The one thing Bill didn't want to occupy his mind was what they had done to Sharon and Helo with the baby. He didn't know how he felt about what they'd done. Taking the baby away seemed somehow infinitely crueler than anything they could have done. But he agreed with Laura that it was too large of a risk. If the Cylons wanted it that badly, it was best to bury it where no one could find it.

At the same time politics in the fleet were stirring up over a stowaway _Galactica_ uncovered on the flight deck. With the presidential election coming up, the flavor of the week was abortion. Laura did not want to outlaw the practice, as she had worked tirelessly on Caprica for a woman's right to control her body. Bill opted to avoid the sticky issue and let the politicians work it out on their own. Their stowaway had sought out Doc Cottle and everyone ended up slightly dissatisfied. The girl ended up getting what she wanted in abortion but Laura had the bitter task of making her official stance on the issue pro-life, against her most basic instincts. Bill listened to her rant against the vile nature of politics for several days afterwards.

As campaigns started firing up, Bill decided the time had come. He may have had Laura to fill his time, but Starbuck still had the man from Caprica occupying her mind. He summoned her to his quarters to tell her the news.

"I've authorized your rescue mission to Caprica, Major."

Kara stood stock still and just stared at him. "What?"

"It's what you've been waiting for, isn't it?"

A smile crested her face. "It is, sir. I can't believe I'm hearing you say that."

"You may begin planning your mission. Send over the final plan and organize your pilots. It's strictly a volunteer only mission. It's high risk. I won't force anyone beyond Cylon lines."

"I wouldn't have it any other way, sir."

"Well, get to it, Major. Bring me back something good."


	9. Chapter 9

She thought that a little more than a week had passed since she'd arrived. Kat couldn't be certain, but she measured the days by her visitors. She had been brought to the surface of a planet, she was sure, and was being held in a hospital room. It wasn't a stage to look like sickbay like the one on the Basestar had been. Kat was sure this was the real thing. She'd been immobilized in a hospital bed with an IV anchored in the crook of her arm. A doctor, the same doctor, visited her twice a day (she thinks).

When she woke this morning, it was with a new pain. Pulling the sheets down, Kat found a new scar shining pinkly up at her inside her left hip. Her first instinct was to start panicking but she kept her head. She'd become a master of self-control since her time in captivity. But Kat had also come to the conclusion that she wasn't going to get out of here. When she'd asked the doctor where she was, he had told her that it was a converted hotel. That led her to believe that she was back on Caprica. Caprica was behind enemy lines. _Galactica_ could not get anyone that far beyond the lines.

So she was stuck.

She'd asked the doctor why she was here. Surely the Cylons didn't want to heal her up? He told her forthwith that they were doing experiments in reproduction. She would be a vessel for their children. Horrified, Kat allowed herself a moment of emotion before she shut down. She stoically accepted her fate, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop it. The doctor had sedated her again, as he was like to do, and she was asleep again.

Not long after that, maybe three days in, Kat remembered Apollo and asked where he was. The doctor had been forthcoming so far so she assumed this topic wouldn't be cloaked either. But he said vaguely that Apollo was around the facility somewhere. Since the Cylons had stopped the experiments they'd done on her on the Baseship in favor of these new reproductive ones down here, she asked if Apollo was still being treated as a lab rat too.

He'd said, "Actually, I believe that project was completed just yesterday. They confirmed the success of the experiment." It seemed to be a subject he was keen on. "Nasty side effects, though. They're probably going to try and see if they can reverse the condition now."

"What did they do to him?"

The doctor smiled. "Now, you know I can't tell you that. What I _can_ say is that it took a long time and a lot of specimens to fully induce the condition without killing them."

"Why are you testing things on humans? How can making a human sick help Cylons do anything?"

"We're just trying to understand. What happens in a human must have an equal part in a Cylon. That's how we were designed. Some models have been experiencing breakdown from within. By studying what happens to your friend, how it progresses and if it can be reversed, we can improve our own design."

"Can I see him?"

The Cylon chuckled. "No, I'm afraid not. You might ruin the experiment. He's quite vulnerable to external contamination right now. It seems they weren't a very careful lot on the Baseship. Nearly killed their first successful subject because of a separate condition. That _they_ caused, you can be sure."

That had been several days ago. Kat was beginning to worry. She hadn't seen the doctor in a long time. He should have shown up by now. It had to have been at least two days since she'd last seen him. Perhaps an opportunity had presented itself to her. Suddenly the emotionless shell she'd been the past few months cracked with ease. Her fire returned, and Kat felt a sense of motivation. She could save herself. She cared if she lived now. She _wanted_ to live.

She sat up and pulled the immobilizer that was on her leg off. They'd stopped the bleeding on her thigh when she got here. It had been oozing the entire time since the botched rescue till they arrived planet-side. It looked solid now. At least it would support her for now. Holding her arm out straight and relaxing as best she could, Kat pulled the IV out. Ripping off a part of the sheet, she cover the spot and held her arm up above her head just the way she'd done all those years ago in the hospital as a teenager donating blood to her brother when he'd attempted to kill himself. It was not without a twinge of pain that she remembered he was still comatose when the Cylons nuked the planet.

Swinging her legs to the floor, Kat felt a flutter of nervousness. It made her nauseated. But that was probably just from the radiation. Without the doctor to administer the meds, she was sure to begin feeling it by now. She stood gingerly. Her leg did not buckle, so she took a few steps to get the feeling back.

The door was stuck, but a few good smashes from the objects in the room weakened it enough for Kat to fight her way through. The noise of it echoed down the corridors. It was completely deserted. She walked the halls looking for anything. Every room was abandoned. When she found a staircase, there was only one way to go: down. A bag of clothes sat on a platform in the staircase beside a shoot for laundry. Kat rooted through it. It was full of civilian clothes with a few standard items recruits to the service were given. She found some mixed pieces that fit her close enough and grabbed a few other things, in case she needed it.

The next floor was also empty. No occupants, Cylon or otherwise. She did find a backpack, Colonial issued. She put the clothes into it and settled it on her shoulders. The next floor held a pharmacy inside what used to be a maintenance closet. She went directly into it and began scanning the multiple shelves. Kat couldn't read a lot of the labels. It appeared the Cylons had pharmaceuticals of their own. Her foot stepped on a bottle on the floor. Not believing it, she bent down to make sure it was real. _Antibiotics. _It felt a little less than half-empty. She immediately put it into her bag. On top of that she shoved stacks of bandages and sterile wipes, even a kit for stitches. All the way in the back, in a pile that must have once been neatly stacked, she found kits of anti-radiation meds. Upon closer examination, a lot of them were empty or damaged. She must have gone through the whole pile and found only seven intact kits. Opening and administering one to herself immediately, she packed away the rest of them.

Kat scanned the remaining shelves, looking for anything she recognized or wasn't in Cylon code. She was no med student by any means. But she had done a few sketchy drug runs in her time. Kat knew enough to tell if something was valuable. Elation flooded through her when she found a single bottle of painkillers. She took one and packed the rest away. Apollo would need them if she ever found him. The pharmacy yielded up three half-filled bottles of antipyretic, the kind every household had for mild headaches and head colds. Lords knew that both of them would be through them in an instant. She grabbed a few other bottles with names she vaguely recognized or if they weren't in Cylon. Stuffing them in the bag, she went back into the hallway and began searching every door for signs of Apollo.

Kat made it to the ground floor without seeing anything. She saw a sign pointing down a flight of stairs marked 'Café'. _Food!_ She made a limping beeline for the stairs and rushed down them. Remarkably, there was still stuff down there. It looked like it was just about to open and be full of visitors any minute. She staggered to the water and ripped the cap off the bottle. It took great restraint not to drink it all in one go. She'd probably just throw it all up if she drank too much at once. Dumping the rest of water and bottles of fruit juices into the shrinking available space of the bag, she moved on to the other food. Sipping the water, Kat surveyed the options. Tucked away at the bottom were economy sized cans of fruit and applesauce. She couldn't help smiling. Cans of beans, meats, and vegetables were scattered around the shelf above that.

She started to laugh out loud. Maybe she was going to shock or was becoming hysterical. Kat couldn't believe her luck. Food, medication, water, _no Cylons_! Was she dreaming? It would be cruel if that was so. She pinched her arm to make sure she was awake. Shaking her head and taking another sip of water, she walked out of the café's kitchen and back into the corridor, looking for signs that may point her to Apollo. She wouldn't eat before she looked in every possible place for him.

A small directory was a little ways outside the café. She read through it. Kat strained her mind to recall anything they had said about Apollo that might give her a hint. Then it occurred to her: He had thought they were taking his blood. The little sign pointed her down a long hall way if she wanted to visit the health clinic. Not knowing many hotels with health clinics in them, she figured this might be a good place to start. She set off in that direction with a drive in her step.

The health clinic turned out to be an office. She got inside there easy enough. A reception area dominated the lobby of the room, separating the seating room from the labs and exam rooms in the back. Kat escorted herself past reception and into the corridor. She pushed open the door to reveal mostly barren rooms. She'd gone through almost all of them, her heart sinking, when she came upon a locked door. She shook the handle, thinking it might just be a sticky door. Definitely locked.

It took a few good minutes to find a way inside. A ring of keys was at reception and that granted her access inside. Kat thought it was rather basic of the Cylons to just use locks and keys. The door swung open to reveal her prize. She approached slowly. Apollo was lying on the ground in just the pants he was abducted in months ago, a tube dripping into the central venous catheter the Cylons had put in his subclavian vein. Kat hoped he wasn't dead, which seemed likely. Kneeling beside him, she put her palm up to his nose. Her brow furrowed. She didn't feel a definite exhale but thought a warm breath might have touched her hand. She decided to put her hand over his heart. Boy was it beating. It was going _too_ fast. Jumping into action, Kat ripped the tube out of catheter and gently shook his shoulder.

"Captain," she called. She didn't want to shake him too much out of fear of hurting him. Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a bit of flesh that wasn't bruised, swollen, or cut. "Captain Adama! Captain! Apollo!"

His eyes seemed to move beneath their lids.

"Lee!" she said loudly. It seemed amplified in the room. "Lee, get up!"

And so he did.

Kat began to laugh with relief. He seemed to just blink at her in confusion. She sat back on her heels laughing and still not believing her luck. The captain watched her and began to cough, amused at the sight he didn't understand. The shifting of the broken ribs with the expanding of his chest caught Apollo by surprise. He turned his head away from Kat just in time to vomit a spectacular amount of bile across the floor. Her laughter died as a hiccup.

"Are you okay, Cap?" she asked with a smile still hanging on her face.

He nodded and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He moved clumsily, like he hadn't done it in a long time.

"Can you stand, sir?" Kat put a hand on his back, disturbed by the feel of his vertebrae. It felt like a stack of marbles. She knew she didn't look any less skeletal, but she found her superior officer more revolting than looking at her own bones.

With a combined effort, both pilots were on their feet. Apollo's joints buckled almost immediately. Kat staggered but kept her balance. He really didn't feel that heavy. They made slow progress out of his cage and out of the office into the corridor. Her hands were beginning to sweat against his hot skin. She didn't know what to make of the total lack of sweat on him despite the heat of his body. She began to wonder if her hands would be black from burn when they finally got back to the café. They stopped twice for him to vomit more bile and stomach acid against the wall. Kat was anxious to get back to the bag full of drugs. She couldn't tell if the vomiting was a result of the Cylon experiments, the radiation, or both. Regardless, Kat planned to stuff the captain full of water and meds the moment they got back to the café.

When they finally got there, she dropped Apollo off at a booth and went to retrieve the bag from the kitchen. Kat collected some of the cans of food, too. She returned to see Apollo pinching the months old cut in his guts with a shaking hand. Pus and fluid dripped out from the red and swollen wound and onto his hand. She almost gagged at the sight.

"Hey," she said. He looked up at her with a dazed look in his eyes.

"Where are we?" he croaked. This was followed by a series of coughs.

"We're on Caprica, I think. In a hotel. The Cylons left. There was nobody here when I woke up." He clearly wasn't making sense of anything she was saying. She switched tactics. "Hey, I've got something for you."

She kneeled down and opened the bag. Deciding he needed water before anything else, Kat opened one of the bottles and offered it to him. He took it with the hand not covered with pus, the hand with the two immobile fingers. Apollo looked unsure of what to do with it.

"Drink, sir." The irony of the lieutenant giving the captain orders was not lost on her. "Just a little. Whatever you can. You're dehydrated, Cap."

And so he did.

Choking and spluttering, he did swallow enough to satisfy Kat for now. Swallowing was hard to do. Neither of them had done it in so long that the action felt foreign. Apollo crossed his arm over the cut, doubled over, and breathed heavily. She decided medication next; radiation first, antibiotics, antipyretic, and painkillers last.

"Cap, you've got to take some radiation meds. I'm going to put it through the catheter. Is that okay?" She figured she might as well use the thing while it was there. Apollo didn't respond aside from breathing harder and curling up tighter. He flipped the branches of the line out from under his arm so Kat could get to it. She injected it without further comment.

"I've got something for the fever, too, sir." The pill was sitting in her hand already.

"Tired," he said.

"Just a few more things, Cap. Then I promise you can sleep."

"Don't waste them."

"What?"

"I'll throw up pills. It's a waste."

"You have to try."

"Cylons tried pills," Apollo said through gritted teeth. He waited for the cramp in his gut to pass before going on. "…kept throwing up…why they kept this." He indicated the catheter.

"Will you at least try to eat something?" Kat was getting frustrated with him already. No wonder Doc Cottle was always so sassy. Taking care of people was infuriating. She knew she could probably force the pills down Apollo's throat and cover his airways until he swallowed, but after just being relieved of Cylon torture, he probably wouldn't take that well. He'd probably lose lucidity at any moment, anyway. He might think she's a Cylon and attack her.

"I'm not hungry," he mumbled. "I used to be…now it just makes me sick. The Cylons just kept tubes down my nose so I didn't starve. They got mad when I puked up all their pills." Apollo's ramble paused, and he looked up at Kat. "How did the Cylons get me here anyway? How come they didn't take anyone else but us off _Galactica_? I don't remember how we got here."

She didn't know what to say. Kat hadn't been with him when the Cylons attacked, so she didn't really know the details of how he'd gotten captured either. Maybe the best thing for him was to rest. She was already tired too. The Cylons had actually been healing her the past week instead of experimenting on her. If she was him, she'd be just as wasted. Apollo _did_ look completely exhausted, to be sure. Kat was sure everything he did caused him pain.

"Before you sleep, let me at least try to clean that mess up," she reasoned. She was nodding toward the festering wound he was trying to hide.

"Okay?" It sounded like a question.

She had him lay on the floor so he couldn't hunch over it and swat her away. Flat on his back, he couldn't sit up fast enough to hit her. She opened a packet with a sterile wipe in it. "It'll probably sting," she warned. His whole body tensed when she touched the alcohol wipe to the flesh. Apollo yelped with pain just once as she cleaned it out as best and thoroughly as she could. When she was done and just dumping some water over it, she asked with a smile, "Are you sure you don't want those painkillers now?"

Apollo was looking past her and didn't seem to have heard what she said. His sunken eyes were glassy from the tears that didn't fall when she'd been tending to the unhealed suture. Kat thought he looked more gaunt than ever right then.

He spoke, "Dad doesn't know I'm here. Tell him I'm okay, but I can't see him right now. I know he'll be mad, but at least he'll know I'm here and not worry anymore. You'll tell him won't you, Zak?"

The ghost he was seeing must have answered because he seemed satisfied after that. He closed his eyes and fell almost instantly into sleep. Kat moved to get up and collect some things from the linen closet she'd seen down the hall before she found him.

"Yes, Captain," she said to his sleeping frame. "I'll tell your father, sir."

Kat had built a nest around the two of them with the linens she'd found. She woke feeling like she'd been under for days. The stagnant water still tasted heavenly going down. Kat took some antipyretic and antibiotics before getting up. Apollo was still dead to the world in the nest. Kat checked to make sure he was breathing. The tiny flutter of his broken chest gave her an answer in the affirmative. His skin felt hotter than yesterday, she noted. She dumped water on a cloth and tried to cool him that way. Kat ate from tiny containers of peanut butter with her fingers as she did this. Leaving the lukewarm rag on his forehead the way she'd seen in movies, Kat got up and decided to explore.

Her priority was to find a radio or some sort of transmitter to put out a distress call. She ranged around the hotel looking for anything she might be able to use. Luck was _still_ with her when she found the ruins of a civilian ship in the forested area behind the hotel. Kat freed the comms deck and pulled the transmitter from its place in the deck. There appeared to still be power in it. She quickly programmed a distress signal into it and turned it on to its full range. Kat lugged the equipment as far as she could back to the hotel. She got as far as the front doors before she gave up and left it there.

Kat paused for a rest. She felt a little lightheaded and her leg was protesting from the exertion. Checking to make sure the beacon was still sending their distress call, Kat got back up and headed down to check on Apollo. He hadn't moved a centimeter, right down to the cloth on his forehead. She sat down next to him in the nest and put her hand up to his nose. She didn't feel anything. Like before Kat moved to put a hand over his heart. His skin was cold. Her heart seemed to squeeze in her chest painfully.

"No, no, no, no, no," she stuttered under her breath. "Captain, wake up! Cap! Please, wake up! Help!"

Perhaps it was her imagination, but in the back of her mind Kat thought she heard the familiar hum of a Raptor coming in for landing.


	10. Chapter 10

Kara couldn't believe the success of her mission. After the stand-off with the Centurions, things had been smooth sailing on Caprica. She could hardly believe they'd just left. More than that, Samuel Anders was hers again. She held him long and hard when they'd realized the Cylons were gone. Back at the Raptors, celebration was already in swing. Kara oversaw the loading of the wounded with Sam by her side.

"Hey, Major," Helo called from inside their Raptor.

"What's up, Helo?"

"I'm picking up a distress signal. Range says the source is a few clicks from here. What do you say?"

Kara thought for a moment. "Let's give it a look. Have all the wounded and survivors packed up and in the air. Could be more people realized the Cylons are gone and need help. Send a search group and a med bird. Have them report to us if they find anyone. Let's get the hell out of here and back to _Galactica_."

"Yes, sir," he replied and dispatched the planes out to the beacon.

Each and every volunteer was helping load Sam's people into their Raptors. Their numbers were admittedly low, but Sam had explained how they were hit by an attack shortly before the Cylons abandoned them. Kara checked that all were aboard and then climbed into her own bird where Helo and Sharon were waiting.

"Let's get this group in the air. Once were up there, wait for the team that went to check the signal to report back. We all jump together." She looked at Sam strapped into his seat and smiled at him. The rescue didn't fill her quite as much as she thought it might. For all the time she spent thinking about Samuel Anders, Kara hated to admit that she didn't feel as happy as she thought she would having him back. It felt more like relief that she'd kept her word. She wondered what it ever was about him that she'd been so stuck on for all those months.

They got all the Raptors airborne and out of the atmosphere. They formed up and went through pre-jump checks. Helo announced the other birds they'd sent out after the signal had contacted them.

"Did they find anything?" Kara asked her friend.

Helo was quiet as he listened to their report. "Yes, sir. They said they've got too injured on board." He sounded astounded as he continued, "They say the passengers are Kat and Apollo."

Kara whipped around in her seat. "_What_?"

He nodded to her. "They've both still got their tags identifying them. Say they wouldn't recognize them without the 'em. They're in bad shape, sir. Med team reports a successful resuscitation on Apollo just a second ago. We need to get them out of here and to Cottle now."

"Okay. Sharon, you're up. Commence jump."

Coordinates were sent throughout the squad and coils were wound up. A few Cylon-aided jumps later, which seemed to take too long in Kara's opinion, and they were back to the fleet. Dee's voice welcomed them back.

"_Galactica_, Starbuck. Mission accomplished. Carrying wounded including Kat and Apollo. Have sickbay on standby."

"Repeat, Starbuck: who are you carrying with you?"

"That's right, _Galactica_. Apollo and Kat were on Caprica. Requesting you have sickbay ready to receive wounded immediately upon landing."

"Roger, Starbuck. _Galactica_ out."

As soon as they were landed and back in the hangar, Kara was out of the Raptor and searching the crowd. Med teams were calling out for assistance everywhere. She was vaguely aware of Sam following behind her. She found the bird she was looking for in the middle of the pack. Kat was guided down from the bird and whisked away by medical personnel. Two of the field medics were bringing the next body out of the Raptor. She could hardly believe her eyes. The tiny shrunken body was covered in thermal blankets. One of _Galactica_'s med staff took over the mechanical breather from the medic while another started an IV in his reed thin arm.

"Is that him? That can't be Apollo," she asked of the pilot that came down out of the bird after they'd taken him away.

"The tags around his neck said Lee Adama."

"Well, was he okay? What was wrong with him?"

The pilot shrugged. "They got his heart going again but he wasn't breathing on his own. They bagged him the whole way back."

Kara turned and almost ran from him. She left the flight deck and headed straight for sickbay. Outside the doors she ran into the Admiral. They stopped and stared at each other.

"Is it true?" he asked.

"Yes," she choked. "Didn't look good."

They loitered around sickbay for a long time before Cottle came and found them. He told the Admiral to follow him to his office. When Kara came with them neither protested. Cottle closed the door, waved them to a seat and lit a cigarette.

"I know what you're thinking, and he's not dead yet."

"Yet?" Adama asked.

"He's quite a mess. Fracture in just about every bone in his body. Some have healed over wrong and will have to be re-broken and set correctly. He's got some head trauma that I can't judge the severity of until he's lucid. It's not any of that that's causing his big problem: septic shock. Lungs show signs of severe pneumonia. He's dehydrated, malnourished, most likely suffering from extreme exhaustion."

"Is he awake?" Kara asked.

The doctor inhaled on his cigarette. "He's looked around for a few seconds before going under again. Don't bother trying to talk to him. He's completely delirious. Has no idea where he is or what's going on. We've got him vented now; make it easier on him to breathe through all that fluid in his lungs. I've started him on dialysis. His liver and kidneys are starting to fail from the sepsis. I don't know if I can reverse it or not."

"Is he in pain?" Adama wonder aloud. "If he's so delirious, I mean."

"Oh, tremendous pain, most likely. His body's shutting down on him, of course he's in pain. I can't give him anything for it, though. It'll lower his heart rate and blood pressure. It's already too low. I'll kill him if I depress it anymore. Anything I give him for the pain will blow his liver anyway. He'll just have to grit through it I'm afraid."

"I want to see him. Now." When the admiral had a plan, nothing was going to stop him. Not even Cottle. Kara nodded her agreement with Adama's plan.

Cottle shrugged. "You'd be better off seeing Kat. She's awake and in much better shape. She could probably give you the answers you're looking for. But if you want to see your son, I can't stop you. Know what you're getting yourself into. That's not the same boy that flew away six months ago. You might not want to see him like this."

"It's been long enough, Doctor. I'm going to see my son."

Both Admiral and Major left the office. Roslin approached them looking apprehensive. The group walked to the two curtained off areas in the back. Kara stayed back with Roslin to allow the father time alone with his son.

Bill appreciated that they left him alone. He hardly recognized the body lying there beneath tubes and thermal blankets. But when he approached the side of the bed, he could see his it really was him. Even with the beard, he could see Lee's jawline, one that he knew so well. The ventilator whizzed as his chest expanded in little bursts and stops instead of one smooth motion. Bill noted the trio of IV medications racing down into the catheter in his son's clavicle. He looked younger than he was, so much smaller. Bill stood there for a while, just staring.

Lee's face was wincing in pain for a few moments before he opened his eyes. Bill smiled when he looked at him, eyes sliding in and out of focus. Lee's eyes settled on him for a few seconds. They blurred with tears almost immediately.

"Hi, son," he said in a low voice. "I'm really going to kick your ass for this."

Bill knew he couldn't talk because of the vent, but it felt good to see for himself that Lee was alive. Even looking out of eyes inside of a skeleton, he was still here. At least they were opened. They could fix whatever was wrong, as long as he kept breathing. He saw Lee lifting a hand wrapped in Doc Cottle's post-operation plaster handiwork. Bill took it in his own. The bony fingers felt cold and they shook under the pressure of the father's hand, but they were definitely alive and that was all that mattered to Bill Adama. They stayed like that for just a few seconds before the younger Adama closed his eyes again.

There were a lot of things he wanted to say but now was not the time. Cottle was right about him getting more answers from Kat. Bill stood for a moment longer beside Lee. He was reluctant to let go of his son's limp hand. The absurd thought that he might disappear again if he let go kept ringing in his head. Promising Lee that he'd be back, Bill gently released his hand and kissed his son's forehead. The admiral slowly left the partitioned area and returned to Starbuck and Laura. Kara was through the curtains almost the instant Bill had emerged. The bond between Apollo and Starbuck was one so deep and complex, Bill was certain he'd never understand it. He wasn't even going to _try_ to understand it. It was enough for him that Lee had someone like Kara who would be at his side without fail and vice versa. He didn't need to know anymore.

Laura approached him. "How is he?"

"He'll pull through." Bill was trying to convince himself more than anything. She could tell he was just hoping that it were true but she didn't comment on it.

"He is very brave. You both are. If it were Billy in there I wouldn't be holding it together nearly as well as you are."

Bill frowned a little bit. Taking a moment to breathe, he said, "How's the election?"

Now it was her turn to frown. "It's close. Just barely ahead. I can't believe so many people think Baltar and Zarek will lead them anywhere safe. And this crackpot plan of theirs to settle on that planet. Especially when we already have a good idea where Earth is."

"I'm sure it will all work out for the best. If you'll excuse me, I'd like to check on my other pilot."

"Yes, of course. I should be getting back to _Colonial One_, too. Don't want to miss the action…You'll let me know if anything happens?" Laura nodded toward the curtain he'd just come out of.

"Of course, Madame President."

She put a hand on his arm to stop him when he turned toward the other curtained-off room where Kat lay. She kissed him on the cheek and whispered, "Everything will be okay, Bill." Then she was gone.

Bill went into Kat's 'room'. She was sitting up in bed. She looked just as bony and gaunt as Lee, but there was a little more color to her.

"How are you doing, Lieutenant?"

"I'm alright, sir. Doc's got me on cloud nine. Figuratively."

He smiled at her joke. "What's the word?"

"Well, Doc said there's a little radiation poisoning being cleared up, some pneumonia, too. Dehydration, malnourishment, and exhaustion. Nothing a little magic can't clear up. Starbuck's going to be insufferable now that she's saved my life, sir."

"I'll try to keep her in line, Lieutenant. Keep her off your back until you're well enough to fight back."

She smiled at him. "Thank you, sir. I'd appreciate that very much."

"I think you've more than earned a break."

Kat's smile began to fade. "Sir, back there on Caprica, I should have stayed with Apollo. I'm so sorry. I just didn't know what to do. I thought the transponder was more important to get us help. I should have known something was wrong. He wouldn't eat anything or take the meds I found…he started hallucinating and I just let him go to sleep."

Bill put a hand up to silence her. "There's nothing you could have done better, Kat. You kept yourself and my son alive for months. I couldn't be more grateful for what you've done for me and this entire fleet. When you're feeling better, I want to present you with the Distinguished Service Medal and make you CAG of our sister ship, the Battlestar _Pegasus._ We are all in your debt."

The pilot wiped the tears from her eyes. "Thank you so much, sir. You have no idea what this means to me."

"Don't thank me. I'm the one who will be thanking you for the rest of my life. We'll talk more later. Get some rest, Captain."

"Captain," she whispered her promotion as Bill left.

* * *

Note:

Hello, humans (and possibly internet spam).

We're almost done. Kurt Vonnegut had some rules for writing short stories. Two of those were to give the reader at least one person to root for and to make awful things happen to the leading characters. I hope I have done those things. (Kurt Vonnegut's words are law to me.)

As ever, thank you for sticking around. I probably wouldn't have.

Cheers,

E.R.


	11. Chapter 11

_One Week Later_

Bill headed down the corridors of _Galactica_ toward sickbay. Already the ship seemed to echo his footsteps and hardly anyone had left. After Baltar was sworn in as president and made his first act to authorize colonization of the planet's surface, some of the crew was requesting to move to the surface. Bill was careful not to allow any mass exodus from the Battlestars but did grant relief of service to those who had a long tour on the ship and had asked for it. Most of the civilian ships had landed and were beginning to break ground. A ceremony was planned to take place in a few days.

But Bill wasn't thinking about that now. Their orbit was quiet around the planet. And with the debris and interference around them, it was unlikely the Cylons could tack them. So Bill relieved himself of duty for the day and went down to meet Kara in sickbay so they could sit together with Lee. Cottle was removing the vent today in favor of an oxygen mask that he could remove. More importantly, Lee could talk if he wanted to now.

Bill found Kara waiting outside the curtains in sickbay.

"Kara," he greeted.

"Sir."

"What's the hold up?"

"The doc's trying to talk to him. Says he has to assess his mental state before we go yapping in Lee's ear expecting him to answer."

In the past few days Lee had made few improvements. Doc Cottle had explained that it was difficult to fight off the sepsis since giving him too much antibiotics would blow his failing liver. He had taken blood samples to try and find the root of all of the grief. The blood work yielded some unusual results. However, it would take a while before Cottle could figure what it was, as the body's response to the sepsis was making it hard to detect any other conditions. Just the other day Cottle had biopsied Lee's bone marrow in attempt to clean out some of the junk clouding his diagnosis. They were still waiting on results.

Still, Lee was not without some improvements. The pneumonia had calmed down enough for the doctor to judge him strong enough to be removed from the mechanical respirators. It wasn't exactly considered an improvement, but he was no longer cold to the touch. Rather, Lee ran a consistent 101 degree fever. Fever was no better than hypothermia, but Bill preferred to feel warmth in his son's hands than the shivering cold. His blood pressure was up, not where it should be, but high enough for Doc Cottle to clear him for small doses of pain meds. He hoped the painkillers would help Lee get back to breathing on his own. A lot of people became dependent on the vents since they were breathing so easy. Hopefully, Cottle reasoned, if they blocked the pain of his crack ribs and sternum, Lee would breathe easy with the mask.

The doctor emerged from the partition with a cigarette already in the process of being lit up. He normally didn't hide his habit when he was with his patients, but for those with lung trouble he made exception. The doc was unsurprised to find Bill and Kara waiting for him. He just nodded the okay for them to go in. Bill was sure Cottle knew that the two of them were going to ask Lee a million questions. Might as well let them. He had tests to run and people to see.

Kara led the way through the blue curtains. She put her arms out expectantly, an open-mouthed smile on her face. "Look at you!" she said. "You can talk now! It's only been years."

Lee smiled at them from under the mask. Bill saw the dialysis machine was going beside him. No luck in the recovery of his kidney functions thus far. Nor the liver for that matter. Lee's skin was beginning to look ever so jaundiced.

"How's it feel?" Kara prompted. "Say something! We've been waiting."

He slowly untangled himself from the mask and held it away from his face. "It feels strange."

"Ha!" Kara beamed. "You sound just like the old man now!"

Bill pulled up the two chairs he and Kara always sat in and put them on either side of the bed.

"That's real good, son," Bill said.

"Doc says I could start drinking today. Gods, I'd like a drink." Lee was quiet but loud enough for them to hear well enough.

"Yeah, just imagine how he'd react if we came in here with some ambrosia and got you boozed up. He'd skin us and hang us above the door."

They chuckled at that together. Lee held the mask over his face.

"What, did that hurt?" Kara asked. She tried to sound joking but there was an undercurrent of regret over causing pain.

Lee shook his head in the negative before taking the mask off again. "Doesn't hurt, but it feels uncomfortable. Like there's a band resisting the expanding of your ribs."

"If you ask me, you deserve a little discomfort," Kara teased.

"She's right," Bill said. "You still have to be punished for the mutiny you led. Don't think we forgot. We ought to kick your ass."

"Are you kidding, Admiral?" Kara said. "He doesn't even have an ass anymore, it's all bones."

Bill smiled. They felt like a family. "Alright. As soon as he gets an ass again, you are authorized to wholly and thoroughly kick it."

They kept up the light banter for a while. Kara and Bill did most of the talking. Lee just listened to them and tried not to laugh too much, throwing in a comment or two occasionally. They were interrupted when the dialysis machine pinged the end of its cycle. Someone from the med staff came to free Lee from the tubes. Kara realized she had to run CAP in a half hour. She got up and told Lee she'd see him tomorrow, kissing him on the forehead before leaving. Bill tried not to read too much into the gesture. The two Adamas just looked at each other for a while.

"How are you doing really?" Bill asked.

Lee shrugged, removed the mask, and elaborated, "I don't know. I can't remember what happened the last few months. I'm tired all the time but can't fall asleep. Everything hurts, can't hardly breathe. But I'm good. I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad _you're_ here. Makes things a little easier."

"I'm glad you're here, too." Bill leaned forward and put a hand on Lee's arm. "You were gone too long. I'm sorry I didn't come get you sooner."

"I'm sure I wouldn't even have been able to tell the difference if you got me after a week or ten years."

"Still. I shouldn't have abandoned you for that long. Look what I let happen to you."

"Not your fault," he said, becoming short of breath and covering his face with the mask. Lee took several deep breaths before continuing. "There was nothing you could do. You were in sickbay when I left _Galactica_. You couldn't stop me. I mutinied and left the fleet. My own fault."

"You're my son," Bill stubbornly pointed out. "I shouldn't let things like this happen to my son. Or anyone on my crew."

"It's what your stubborn crew gets for defying your orders." Lee smiled at him under the mask again.

"It's just nice to have you back. I _will_ kick your ass when you're back on your feet."

Lee snorted and shook his head like Bill had just told a bad joke.

"What is it?"

He looked at Bill with a skeptical look on his face, one eyebrow quirked up. "Come on, Dad. We both know I'm not coming back from this."

Bill was stunned. He had said it with such certainty, as though it were blatantly obvious. It sounded almost as if he was explaining it to a child. To be sure, Bill had been trying his hardest to deny that very thought since he first heard Cottle's report. He shook his head and tried to speak. "Lee -"

"It's okay, Dad. Everyone knows it. I've known it pretty much the whole time. I'm okay with it. I just wanted to be back here, with you and Kara and _Galactica_, when it happened. I wanted to be at home."

Bill continued to shake his head. He was sure he'd begun to cry. The days he'd been trying to deny the likelihood of his last son's imminent death had come to an end. But it wouldn't happen. It _couldn't. _Lee put a hand on top of the one Bill had on his arm.

"Dad. It's okay."

He looked at the man in the bed but all he could see was an infant in Carolanne's arms already wailing his defiance as she passed the baby to him; his two year old boy jealous of the attention his baby brother was getting, the seven year old Lee glaring daggers at him when he left to return to the service again, his ten year old son running away from him when he came home on leave, the first born smiling at him despite their history when he first got his wings. Bill couldn't believe he was capable of feeling all of this at once.

"There has to be something…What can I do?" he asked hopelessly.

"Just be here. All I want is to be here with you for the rest of the time we have. That's all. Just stay with me this time."

Bill nodded through his tears. "I can do that."

It was two days later that Doc Cottle paid Lee another visit. He was sitting with Bill while they waited for Kara to get off duty. He said he'd found disturbing results in the bone marrow biopsy. It appeared the root of all the other problems was discovered. The Cylons had induced a blood cancer in Lee. He speculated they had been giving him injections to promote the growth of peripheral blood stem cells. It wasn't working well, as all it did was force immature cells out of the marrow. The Cylons must have kept trying with varying injection concoctions until there was unchecked flow of deformed cells spreading into the blood stream. They couldn't stop the flow once they'd given him so many drugs. Cottle was surprised Lee had lived this long. It was a very aggressive cancer they'd created. The radiation on Caprica combined with mystery serums and the collecting of his blood were the only things prolonging his life. The deformed cells couldn't fight off the infection that developed in the cut on his stomach, which slowly grew unchecked and caused the sepsis. The cancer had metastasized in his liver, causing it to fail, which in turn also caused the kidney failure.

Bill had to ask, "Can you do anything?" He kept his eyes on Lee the whole time, who took the opportunity to hide his face in the oxygen mask.

"I can make him miserable with chemotherapy and radiation for a few weeks before he dies from the infection." Always trust Doc Cottle to make things cut and plain. "I won't do that though. It's a waste of resources and I know Lee doesn't want it anyway. I can make it as painless as possible for him. I'll give you two some time to talk. Call me if you need anything." The last part was directed to Lee.

He nodded in acknowledgment and Cottle left.

"You knew," Bill accused.

"I had an idea." Lee half smiled at him. "I've had months of sitting around doing literally nothing to come to terms with it, though. Remember what we talked about. You're just going to stay with me. You're not going to make this any harder than it already is, are you?"

He took a shaky breath. Bill couldn't believe he was about to agree to this. "No. I couldn't do that to you. I figure I take my chance to listen to you now since I won't have many more. We'll just make up for lost time…until there isn't anymore."

"Thanks, Dad."

"Does Kara know?"

"Not yet. I'll tell her tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yeah. She wants to stay with me since everyone else is going down to ground breaking ceremony. You have to go, Dad." Lee saw that Bill was about to protest. "Roslin's been asking for you. Go see her and have a drink for me."

He bit his lip, unsure of what to do. True it was that Laura had been asking to speak with him. He'd been too busy sitting up with Lee and Kara to really talk with her. He felt bad for neglecting their relationship since he really did value it so much. He'd need it when the one with his son was gone.

"Dad, I'm not going to die tomorrow."

And so he agreed.

* * *

Note:

In my experience, short stories are the devil's work. They are just long enough to get you invested but never long enough to leave you satisfied. Such is the nature of what I tried to create here. I've felt that pieces such as this should have loose ends and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. When I leave things unresolved, it's intended to give you the illusion that life keeps going and doesn't end just because the writing did. Awful, right? If this were a more fleshed out story with a lot more elaboration, I would, of course, leave nothing up in the air. Alas, that is not what I wanted here. Since short stories make me mad, I wanted anyone who read this to share in my grief of them and go "Grr, that Eliot Rosewater is a lazy piece of work."

This must sound like a bad excuse for me to be lazy to y'all. And it sort of is.

On factual inaccuracies: you're right! I am a silly liar and you are right. Just because a fact is of little consequence here does not give me the right to lie about it. Shame on me, shame on my whole family, shame on my cow. I'm sure I will get around to adjusting it sometime. Hopefully, most of you will not notice.

Two more to go now. If I could, I would send all of you a jar of frosting. Are we friends yet?

Cheers,

E.R.


	12. Chapter 12

Saul lingered outside of sickbay waiting for Bill. He was feeling impatient but didn't want to hurry Bill away. Despite his eagerness to be with Ellen in a place that resembled home, Saul couldn't very well tell him to hurry up and leave his dying son so that he could meet his perfectly healthy wife at a party. It had been late last night as the two of them were enjoying a nightcap that Bill told Saul the news. The XO had been gobsmacked. It certainly explained his odd behavior over the past three days. Bill had been more somber than usual. Saul had just sat there and drank, unsure what to say.

Despite all of that, Saul was still anxious to see his wife. Maybe it was possible that he was reacting to the news of imminent death by assuring himself that his own family was still alive and well. Getting off _Galactica_ would be good for Bill. Who knows what would happen to him if he stayed with Apollo all day every day until he finally died? No, it was best to get the old man out and into a change of scenery. Roslin would distract him and let him vent all the things he wouldn't let himself sat to his son. Now if only he would leave sickbay already. Not even Apollo's insistence was enough to expel Bill from the room.

It was Starbuck's arrival that eventually forced him out. Saul looked up a few minutes after she had gone in, to see her bodily removing the admiral from the room.

"Now go and enjoy your date, sir. I'll babysit your son and everything will be fine! I'll make sure he eats his broccoli and goes to bed on time. Now _go_!" She gave him a final push out the door and blocked the way back in.

"You'll have somebody contact if anything chan-" Bill began.

"_Yes_! I promise the first thing I'll do is call you. Go get drunk and have a ball, Admiral."

With that, she promptly shut the doors and held the handles shut until Bill and Saul started down the corridor. Slowly at first until Bill convinced himself to just get on with it. Saul matched his pace.

"Everything look okay?" Saul ventured the question. He didn't really want to talk about it, but he knew Bill needed to.

"Doc Cottle says it looks the same; slowly and steadily declining. Said he'd start sedating him at night since he hasn't been sleeping." Saul noted how busy his friend looked. His mind was whirling so fast he could practically hear it.

"You're allowed to have time to yourself, Bill." They were boarding a Raptor as he spoke. "You haven't left _Galactica_ since they brought him back. You need to get out."

"I don't like the idea of being so far away."

"You couldn't do anything no matter how far away you are."

"I know that. I just want to be there when…when it happens." Their plane took off. "I owe him that much."

"If Cottle says he'll be fine for a day, he'll be fine. If Starbuck's spending the day in there, then you know she'll keep him alive out of pure force of will. You need this, Bill. He's not your whole life."

"He should have been. They both should have."

Saul's frustration started to show. "Frak's sake, Bill, you knew this would happen the whole time. There's no point getting all emotional about it now. You can't change anything so quit moping and pick yourself back up. He's not even dead yet."

He, of course, had no children, thank the gods, but Saul couldn't see how anyone could get so hung on anyone like Bill was. It was selfish of him, but what could he do really? Apollo was dying. That was that. What was there left to think about? Shit happens. Bill saved six of seven without any horrible lasting damage. That was something to be proud of. Saul didn't know what he would do if he had to spend extended periods of time on _Galactica_ with Bill acting like a ghost haunting its climate-controlled corridors. So he figured the best thing to do was give the admiral a kick in the ass and see if he shaped up.

Saul's plan did not have immediate success since Bill didn't say another word to him the rest of the way down to the planet. They walked in silence for a time before Ellen came and claimed Saul away from the old man. He went gladly. It was past time that husband and wife spent some happier, freer time together. Ellen had been adjusting poorly after her rescue from Cylon captivity. Not even the homier atmosphere of _Cloud 9_ could calm her nerves. Doc Cottle had prescribed light sleep aids to get her through the night. Hopefully a day under a real albeit cold sun could set her right. All the rest of the crew that was swarming the open bar seemed to have already had their spirits lifted infinitely.

Saul went right for the bar and began his pre-game with a potent brew. A sweeter drink was given to Ellen. They walked around surveying the scene for a little bit before queuing up with others who were only half-listening to Baltar declare the rock New Caprica and watch him struggle to move the first pitiful pile of soil on the ground breaking of the city-to-be. Several of _Galactica_'s residents raised their glasses to it in mocking and began to quickly disperse in search of trouble to get themselves into.

It ended up being quite a good party, no thanks to its host. No one thought much of the ground breaking ceremony, but the celebration was exactly what the fleet needed. Some free flowing booze and a chance to be care-free was all anyone wanted. Drinking songs filled the chilled air, dancers circled around each other on the daises, other groups of people snuck off to cause mischief. There had never been such an event that allowed people from all over the fleet to interact with each other so much. Instant friends were struck up at the bar and would sneak away a few hours later hand in hand. For just a moment they could almost believe they were back on Caprica and everything was as it should have been.

Night fell and lights twinkled from their perches. Few lightweights had already succumbed to the open bar. Not Saul Tigh, though, and his tolerance of steel. True, he couldn't remember most of what he was saying to those around him, but he was still on his feet packing the drink away like a camel does water. He was sure he'd given Tyrol a lecture on the proper ways to distill his brew. If there was one thing Saul knew, it was how to make alcohol where there was no more alcohol. The only way he knew he'd had maybe a little too much to drink was he saw Ellen shamelessly flirting with some civilian and he didn't even care. Let her cope with her captivity whichever way she liked. Gods knew _this_ was how he was dealing with it.

He didn't recall seeing Bill when it got darker, but then again he didn't recall seeing anyone in specific for most of the night. Saul had gotten into a triad game with Samuel Anders, who could not hold his liquor. Tyrol and Hot Dog quickly fell out of the game, impaired as their judgment of the game was. They sang crude songs as Saul and Anders duked it out through their respective buzzes. Saul wouldn't recall who won the next morning but he didn't appear to be missing anything of value, so he took that as a sign that things had turned out okay.

It was probable their game was interrupted and never finished when Ellen had come stumbling over to Saul with an insistence that hadn't been there in the past weeks. She'd led him away from the noise and hustle of the party and they'd frakked twice with a sloppy hunger that had been too long absent. Saul was relieved to finally see some semblance of his wife again. She was finally done moping and making a big deal over something that was months behind them, gods willing. He'd take the flirting woman with the wandering eyes any day over the distant person who didn't even want to touch him some days. At the end of the day, she always came back to his bed. That was all Saul really cared about. Who cares if that wasn't the healthiest way to conduct a marriage? It worked for the drunk XO and his tease of a wife.

It was warmer in the morning. Saul brushed himself off and helped up Ellen. They straightened their clothes as best they could. Neither said much, but it wasn't because they didn't have anything to say. It was more like they didn't _need_ to. He couldn't recall a time when he'd been more connected with his wife. Together they walked arm in arm back to the foundation of the city. In the light of the morning sun, somehow the city seemed like an unbelievably good idea. Saul thought for just a moment that maybe it would be a good idea to request release from service to settle down here.

Ellen voiced almost that very thought.

"We should settle down here. Things are better." She smiled at him. Saul couldn't help but notice the way her hair looked so perfectly styled after sleeping on the ground. He didn't think he'd ever been more in love just then.

"I was thinking the same thing." He spied Bill up ahead and felt the second guessing rising up in his chest. He had a history of loyalty to the old man. Sometimes he didn't think Ellen was enough to convince him to leave his friend. "But then again…we all have out place."

She gave him a tight smile. She didn't want to disrupt the bond that had formed between them anymore than Saul did. She patted his arm and said she'd go seek out something for them to eat. Saul agreed and watched her go. Food would be good for the pounding in his head. Hangovers didn't bother Saul much. He was too used to them. He headed over to Bill.

"Admiral. How was your night?"

Bill nodded. "It was very nice. You look like you had a good time."

"Yeah, well. You know what they say about the honeymoon phase."

"Do I ever. Speaking of honeymoons, you missed all the action. Dee and Laura's press secretary got married this morning."

Saul was surprised. He was sure that Dee could chew that kid up and spit his bones out. Perhaps he wasn't the only one who thought last night's decisions were good ones. "Well, I hope it doesn't affect her performance."

Bill shrugged. "We all needed this. I'm happy for her. Your drinking buddy still hasn't recovered." He was gesturing to the body of Samuel Anders that was still lying under a table.

"Aw, he's a lightweight."

Both men snorted with laughter.

Saul thought he smelt an odd smoky scent coming from Bill. His laughter was renewed when he placed it.

"Smells like you had a good time, too."

Bill had the decency to look sheepish. "It's a party, Saul. We're all off duty."

"Yes, sir."


	13. Chapter 13

When Bill got back onboard _Galactica_ and showered the scent of smoke off of himself, he automatically headed down to see Lee. He ran into the doctor coming out of his office inside sickbay. They walked together.

"Doctor," he greeted. "All's well?"

The doctor looked slightly irritated. "I ought to have her banned from my sickbay."

"Kara?" Bill didn't even know why he was asking. Who else? "What'd she do?"

"She snuck your son out of here and they were frakking around on the flight deck. I would have slapped her with a ban from the ward right then, but when they turned back up look what happened." The doctor drew back the curtain to reveal Lee and Kara crammed on the bed together sound asleep. "He slept the whole night without any drugs and didn't waking up once. Not going to fight her if she can do that."

Bill couldn't keep the smile off of his face. He didn't even try to fight it. The scene was so moving he couldn't even bring himself to be angry with her for taking Lee out of sickbay and risking a mortal injury.

"I think we can cut her a break," he said to the doctor.

"I won't tolerate that again. Make sure she knows that." Cottle wandered off to another patient.

As soon as he left Kara's eyes popped open and she gave Bill a sly smile.

In a low voice she said, "Knew he wouldn't yell at me if I pretended to be asleep."

"It was still a stupid move," Bill assured her.

As gently as she could, Kara detangled herself from Lee without disturbing him. He went on sleeping when she was free. "Like a baby," she mouthed to the admiral, smile in place. They walked through the curtain and down the ward a little ways so they wouldn't disturb him.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

"Well, it went okay, sir. Started out great, and then we got down to the flight deck. You really should have made some people stay onboard, sir. No one was on the deck. We walked right down there with no one batting an eye. Sat down there for a good few hours before anyone even realized he wasn't in sickbay." Kara wiped the back on her hand on her nose. "Then he told me about _it_."

Bill bowed his head. "Are you okay?"

She made a disbelieving huffy sound. "Not at first. I'll admit I got weepy when he first told me. But I think I'm okay now. He should have told me sooner."

He stayed silent. What should he say next?

"You know, every time I get in the mood to blow the Cylons out of the sky, it's at the most inappropriate times."

They both snorted.

"I know what you mean. Just when the fleet starts to settle down somewhere I want to go out and hunt down some Baseships."

Kara sighed, "But now's not the time."

"No, it's not. Until then, our hands out full. Soon enough, though."

* * *

Nothing troubled the fleet. People applied to be let off the ship. As the months went on, Bill approved them. Against his better judgment, he had let _Galactica_ become horribly undermanned. They all couldn't help but feel safe here. The surface scraped by. Rebuilding was slow and not entirely successful. But they made do. The residents seemed to think New Caprica was no worse than living as space nomads. At least there was a sun.

Some remained loyal to _Galactic_, refusing to leave the old girl. Bill was touched. Laura visited the ship often. She and the admiral fell into a familiar routine each liked very much. She told him about the infant city and the school she was running. She loved being a teacher again. Laura had always like kids. Pity she'd never had any of her own. But the school was enough for her. Bill liked hearing these things. It sounded like stories echoing across the universe from the home and the good times he'd known in his past.

He always promised her that he'd visit her school when he wasn't needed on _Galactica_. They both knew that that meant after Lee died. Laura would walk with Bill down to sickbay most days she visited and would sit with his son and whoever else happened to be visiting that day. The pilots would be there a lot, bringing their triad game with them. They played music and danced right there in the room. Ambrosia was snuck in and passed around as freely as stories of being home on Caprica or their glorious moments in the cockpit. There were no ranks when they came to visit the dying ex-CAG. There were only friends and brothers and sisters who had lived through the same baptism of fire. It was plain to see how much Lee appreciated their company. None of them were awkward or censored around him. When they were all there, it was just the pilots killing time together like it used to be.

Kat and Hot Dog seemed to be frequent visitors. They'd usually stop in between CAPs. Kat was now CAG of _Pegasus_ but made an effort to seek out her mother ship. The other, newer ship felt foreign to her. It was almost as if she was wearing someone else's pants. She got her job done but it wasn't the same; the ship wasn't quite the same for her. She liked being with her own pilots and her CAG. Apollo would always be CAG to her. He was the only one she'd known, though it was for only a short time that they saw combat together. Kat knew she was being stupid, but in her mind _CAG_ would forever be synonymous with _Lee Adama_. It was an honor to have the title now.

Hot Dog was of a like mind. He had spent a lot of time getting back into shape and ready for flight. He hadn't been flying too long, but he was getting better. By now, he was probably a better pilot then he'd ever been before the abduction.

Just a few times Saul Tigh even wandered into Lee's company. It was more out of a sense of loyalty to Bill than anything else. He felt obligated to visit. Saul secretly felt horrible guilt over the whole ordeal. Being in the room made him feel his frak-up so bad that he couldn't stand to be around himself. The whole point of his taking over for Bill was to make things easier while he recovered. As much as he blamed Sharon Valerii for shooting him, Saul knew it was all him that had shat on the fleet and drove Lee to the measures he took. And it was not killing his oldest most loyal friend in the most ugly, drawn-out fashion imaginable. In many ways, Saul Tigh took this the hardest. For that reason, he could not be in the same room as the dying reminder of his greatest failure.

More often though, it was just Bill, Kara, and Lee in there. She would squeeze up there beside him on the bed and support his head on her shoulder. Bill would sit in his chair beside them, his feet up on the bed. He liked looking at the two of them there. It was like looking at what could have been, what _should_ _have_ been. He liked seeing a happy future, even if it wasn't real. Kara would sit next to him for hours just talking and laughing. She wasn't a sister, or a friend, or even a lover, Bill noted. Kara Thrace was somehow more than the sum of all three of those to his son.

A majority of the time they talked about good times. They told Lee about the Battlestar _Pegasus_ and all its misadventures. Anything that had happened when he was gone, they told him about. Lee never told them anything about his time away from them. Bill told old war stories from his time in the cockpit. If Laura was there, she always had a funny story to tell about the kids at school. That always led them to recount tales of their elementary years. Kara always made them laugh at her youthful antics, like when she'd anonymously leave candy on a particularly angry teacher's desk to make them feel better or when she'd tossed a peanut butter sandwich at the ceiling and got it stuck there where it lived on forever in infamy. Often Lee and Kara would reminisce about their time at the Academy together.

And so it went.

But only for so long. It was too quickly fading. The easy conversations became silent vigils before long. Kara and Bill would sit there and not saying anything as time between Lee's lucid moments stretched longer and longer. Sometimes they'd talk to each other, but mostly they didn't have to. It was any moment that this clock would expire, and they'd have to find something else to fill their time. Doc Cottle said it was likely that he'd fall asleep one day and everything would quit while he was out.

The ventilator was back and their time talking was at its end. Bill knew his son was hurting, but was torn. He wanted to end Lee's suffering, but he didn't want him to go. There was nothing left for it. Kara and Bill caught Lee at a last moment of awareness.

"I was saving these for you in a few years. But considering the circumstances," Bill trailed off.

He began pinning his own commander's rank to Lee's collar Kara added, "He wanted to name you commander the whole time. Old man just doesn't want me to outrank you. The fleet was going to have a dynasty of Adamas in command." She was forcing her happiness a little too much. It showed and they all knew.

Lee took her hand with the one Doc Cottle had tried and failed to recover the mobility of two fingers in. With a soft squeeze he shook his head at her. Kara let out a shaky laugh and wiped her eyes. "You're right. Sorry."

Bill straightened up and saluted his son. "For your service, Commander _Galactica_."

Lee rolled his eyes at his father at the same time he nodded in appreciation. His eyes seemed to fall out of focus for a moment. Their shutters closed.

"You did good, son. I'll see you soon. But not too soon." Bill kissed Lee's forehead and then sat back down in his seat to ride out the rest of it. Kara leaned over to kiss him, too, and whispered, "Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama."

She then sat back with the admiral. Kara rested her head on Bill's shoulder but kept her hand in Lee's. The elder Adama put and arm around her. They stayed that way until the mechanical respirator turned itself off when Lee's heart stopped.

If one had been looking close enough, they might have seen him smile. Kara Thrace and Bill Adama were always looking close enough.

* * *

Eventually the Cylons did return, as they all knew they would. The fleet jumped away abandoning the surface-dwellers. There was a rescue plan, of course. If there was one thing Admiral and Major knew, it was that you don't leave your own behind. The plan was a success. The two of them met up almost every night. CIC or CAG duties would sometimes fill their time, but mostly they could find each other for a drink. They'd raise their glasses and toast those who were no longer with them by name so that they'd never forget their brave compatriots.

And so they never did.

* * *

Note:

That's the end, my friends. Thank you so much for sticking around and seeing this to the end. Maybe we'll do this again sometime. I've started brewing a new story already, actually! It's much longer and will hopefully leave you less inclined to kill me.

Cheers,

E.R.


End file.
